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Previous studies on social influence and virtual product adoption have mainly taken users’ purchase behavior as a dichotomous variable (i.e. purchasing or not). Given the prevalence of competing versions (basic vs upgraded) of a virtual product in online communities, this paper investigated the differences in the effect of social influence on users’ adoption of basic and upgraded choices of a virtual product. It also examined how the effect varies with users’ social status and user-level network density.

A natural experiment was conducted in an online game community. Two competing versions (basic vs upgraded) of a virtual product were provided for in-game purchase while a random set of users selected from 897,765 players received the notification of their friends’ adoption information. A competing-risk model was used to test the hypotheses.

Social influence exerts a stronger positive effect on users’ adoption of the upgraded virtual product than of the basic virtual product. Middle-status users have the greatest (least) susceptibility to social influence in adopting the upgraded (basic) virtual product than low- and high-status users. User’s network density enhances the effect of social influence on adoption of both virtual products, even more for the upgraded one.

This research contributes to the social influence and product adoption literature by disentangling the different effects of social influence on basic and upgraded versions of a virtual product. It also identifies the boundary conditions that social influence works for each version of the virtual product.

Focusing on the social influence processes in the context of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), this study aims to investigate the nomological network of social influence factors, a topic seldom explicitly articulated in the literature in this unique context.

This study adopts a mixed-methods approach to develop and test a context-specific model of social influence processes in MMORPGs. First, the authors conducted qualitative interviews with MMORPG players to identify the drivers shaping players' perceptions of social influences. Second, the authors formulated and tested a research model with quantitative data collected from 450 respondents of an online survey.

Through the qualitative study, the authors identify leader enthusiasm, social support and social presence as the critical drivers of social influence factors. The result of the quantitative study validates the influences of the critical drivers and demonstrates the impact of social influences on MMORPG players' we-intention to continue playing games.

This research extends the social influence theory by identifying contextualized drivers that shape MMORPG players' perception of social influences determining their we-intention to continue playing games. MMORPG service providers can draw on these drivers to leverage social influences to increase players' we-intention of continuance.

With the rising concerns of compulsive use of social media, it is important to understand why users develop such unplanned and irrational behaviors. Leveraging the uses and gratification theory, the authors aim to explore the determinants of compulsive use of social media from the dual perspectives of individual needs (need to belong (NTB) and need for uniqueness) and peer-related factors (referent network size and perceived peer activeness). Due to the importance of self-construal in cognitive deliberation on peer influences, the moderating effects of self-construal were taken into consideration.

The authors empirically test their model by conducting an online survey with 459 WeChat users.

The results show that compulsive use of social media is predicated by both individual needs and influence from peers. Moreover, peer influence could be attenuated when individuals develop a high degree of independent self-construal.

The authors' study contributes to the research of compulsive behavior in the context of social media use by incorporating the dual effects of individual needs and social influence. The authors also offer managerial insights on eradicating the formation of compulsive behaviors.

The authors examine the dual effects of individual needs and peer influence in predicting compulsive use of social media and the moderating role of self-construal, which have been rarely investigated in this context.

Live streaming commerce becomes increasingly popular, and some special shopping behaviors existing in traditional e-commerce also emerge in this new context. The current research mainly focuses on determinants of compulsive buying in live streaming commerce by taking fear of missing out (FOMO) and social influence into account.

Using the data collected from 242 experienced consumers in live streaming commerce, the proposed model was empirically assessed by partial least squares based structural equation model.

The results show that both informational and normative social influences have positive effects on FOMO, which in turn exert an influence on compulsive buying. In addition, informational social influence also directly and positively affects compulsive buying.

This study provides a deeper understanding of FOMO and social influence in the process of compulsive buying. It offers a new avenue to analyze the mechanism regarding why compulsive buying occurs in live streaming commerce.

Power is one of the single most critical concepts for understanding industrial relations management. Yet, despite having been subject to much scholarly attention, existing research often implicitly assumes an organizational level of behavior or examines influence tactics within the confines of an individual-level dyad. This has led to a limited understanding of influence exercises involving a third person. Motivated to advance the understanding of this phenomenon, this study aims to explore how boundary spanners from a buying organization influence supplier representatives by involving a third person.

This study uses a longitudinal single case study design grounded in social control theory. Data consist of interviews, observations and documents collected over a period of 27 months in a global sourcing context.

The findings demonstrate how the influence agent from the buying organization can invoke a third person’s mediated and nonmediated social power base through either direct or indirect social control mechanisms. With these findings, this paper makes a novel theoretical contribution by developing a deeper understanding of underexposed social influence tactics unfolding in individual-level triads.

This study offers boundary spanning managers with practical insights into subtle and indirect forms of social influence with which they can influence external exchange partners.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to draw on social control theory to examine interpersonal influence tactics in buyer-supplier relationships. By integrating this theoretical perspective with extant research on social power, this study emphasizes the importance of considering how the influence agent mobilizes a third person’s social influence base.

This study aims to analyze the effects of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions on the behavioral intention of using mobile health applications, especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

A survey was developed using an online survey platform and distributed to Indonesian consumers for three weeks, and 149 usable responses were obtained. The principal component analysis, linear regression and analysis of variance tests were performed to test the validity and reliability of the measurement model and the hypothesized relationships among constructs.

Surprisingly, unlike previous studies on IT adoption, the findings show that social influence has no significant impact on behavioral intention. Facilitating conditions have a very weak to almost no significant impact on behavioral intention to use mobile health applications.

This research is conducted during pandemic COVID-19 where using mobile health apps is a must. In the future this research can be expanded as comparison study after the pandemic COVID-19 stated.

The result implies that digital technologies adoption intention is strongly affected by performance expectancy and effort expectancy, with performance expectancy as the most significant predictor. Nonetheless, the interaction of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions influences behavioral intention significantly. Therefore, social influence and facilitating conditions are still important even with very insignificant effects.

To improve consumers’ behavioral intention to use mobile health applications, application providers should promote mobile health applications as useful telemedicine tools by primarily focusing on the application performance and usage experience.

In today’s business world, adopting social commerce for day-to-day operations has increasingly become an important phenomenon. Several factors have been identified by previous researchers regarding the adoption of social commerce, but academic research is scarce on the relationship between the factors influencing social commerce adoption and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the post-COVID-19 situation. This study aims to identify the impact of technological, environmental and entrepreneurial factors on the adoption of social commerce by SMEs in Sri Lanka.

A quantitative study utilised the deductive approach and collected data through a field survey by distributing a five-point Likert scale questionnaire to conveniently selected respondents from Sri Lankan SMEs. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used for the analysis of 384 responses.

The results revealed that technological factors [technology availability (TA) and cost-effectiveness (CE)], environmental factors [bandwagon effect (BE)] and entrepreneurial factors [attitude (AT), innovativeness (IN) and IT knowledge (IK)] have a significant impact on the social commerce adoption of SMEs in Sri Lanka. This study, as the first of its type, offers insightful information on the influence of variables on the adoption of social commerce after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Similar to any research, this study also has inherent limitations. Due to time and financial restrictions, the study’s convenience sampling method was adopted. The study’s possible limitation is its narrow focus, which could mean that it only examines a select few social media (SM) networks. The study’s conclusions might be less generalised since it focused on the western province of Sri Lanka. Future studies should take a cross-cultural strategy to explore the influence of social commerce adoption to improve the generalisability of research findings.

This study provides an in-depth assessment of critical factors, facilitating policymakers, owners, leaders and managers (decision-makers) to gain insight into the real influencing factors on social commerce adoption and the significance of SM. The study helps them comprehend how outstanding governance and knowledge of influencing factors can boost SME success in various ways. For example, research reveals that various factors have a major influence on social commerce adoption.

There has been limited research conducted on social commerce adoption after the COVID-19 pandemic period; thus, this study looked at the variables influencing it amongst SMEs in a South Asian developing country like Sri Lanka after the pandemic lasted for two years. By placing a strong emphasis on the role of entrepreneurial characteristics and the available technology within one single framework in the context of SMEs and their involvement with social commerce adoption, this study contributes to the past literature by emphasising the role of several significant factors in SMEs' adoption of social commerce. Whilst previous studies looked at multiple factors influencing the adoption of social commerce globally, this study focussed on how these factors have a significant impact on SMEs in Sri Lanka.

This study developed a multi-perspective framework combining technological, environmental and entrepreneurial factors influencing SMEs to adopt social commerce. The study provides a contribution to the literature on social commerce adoption from the perspective of SMEs in a developing country like Sri Lanka after COVID-19. Exclusively, it examines the impact of entrepreneur-related factors on social commerce adoption.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the literature on information elicitation. The authors investigated the impact of social influence strategies on eyewitness recall performance. Specifically, the authors examined the effect of social influence techniques (Cialdini, 2007) on recall performance (Experiment 1) and conducted a follow-up experiment to examine the incremental effect of social proof on the report everything cognitive interview mnemonic (Experiment 2).

Participants watched a video depicting vandalism (Experiment 1: N = 174) or a verbal altercation (Experiment 2: N = 128) and were asked to recall the witnessed event. Experiment 1: Participants were assigned randomly to one of six conditions: control (open-ended prompt), engage and explain (interview ground rules), consistency (signing an agreement to work diligently), reciprocity (given water and food), authority (told of interviewer’s training) and social proof (shown transcript from an exemplar participant). Experiment 2: The authors used a 2 (social proof: present, absent) × 2 (report everything: present, absent) between-participants design.

Across both experiments, participants exposed to the social proof tactic (i.e. compared to a model exemplar) spoke longer and recalled more correct details than participants not exposed to the social proof tactic. In Experiment 2, participants interviewed with the report everything mnemonic also spoke longer, recalled more correct details, more incorrect details and provided slightly more confabulations than those not interviewed with the report everything mnemonic.

The findings have practical value for police investigators and other professionals who conduct interviews (e.g. military personnel, doctors obtaining information from patients). Interviewers can incorporate social proof in their interviewing practices to help increase the amount and accuracy of information obtained.

This study aims to examine the relationships between functional value (quality and price), social value (extrinsic and intrinsic), emotional value and attitude toward a brand, as well as the direct relationship between attitude toward a brand and the purchase intention of tires. This research also explores the moderating effect of social influence on the relationship between attitude toward a brand and purchase intention.

A conceptual model based on literature is developed and tested using an online survey, with a sample of 760 active drivers gathered through purposive sample judgment. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling with AMOS 28 and Hayes Process Macro 4.

The results demonstrate that extrinsic social value has a positive direct relationship with attitude toward brands. The findings also indicate that intrinsic social value has a positive influence on attitudes toward brands. Attitude toward a brand is found to have a positive direct relationship with purchase intention.

This research extends the existing literature on consumption values and offers insights into the specific values that influence attitudes toward tire brands as well as purchase intention. The findings provide insights to tire businesses in values that they could focus on when developing strategies to increase positive brand attitude and purchase intention.