Factors affecting the attitude tow ard participating in social networking sites in vietnam

People and their activities are controlled too much by internet sites nowadays, especially since social networking sites started up in Vietnam, a lot of internet users cannot help avoidi

International School of Business

-

Nguyen Hoai Thanh

FACTORS AFECTING THE

ATTITUDE TOWARD PARTICIPATING IN SOCIAL

NETWORKING SITES IN VIETNAM

MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours)

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014

International School of Business

-

Nguyen Hoai Thanh

FACTORS AFECTING THE

ATTITUDE TOWARD PARTICIPATING IN SOCIAL

NETWORKING SITES IN VIETNAM

ID: 22110054

MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours)

SUPERVISOR: Dr Nguyen Thi Mai Trang

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014

First, I would like to give my gratitude and deepest appreciation to my research supervisor, Dr Nguyen Thi Mai Trang for her intensive support, valuable suggestions, guidance and encouragement during the time of doing my research

Second, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Professor Nguyen Dinh Tho, Professor Nguyen Dong Phong, Dr Tran Ha Minh Quan for their valuable time as the members of the proposal examination committee Their comments and meaningful suggestions were a great help for my completion of this research and other students as well

Third, I would like to thank all the participants as well as my colleagues, my friends who did contribute to this research

Last but not least, my sincere thanks are also to all the members of ISB School who are always trying to create the best convenience for me as well as ISB students during the course

Vietnam has been one of the fastest growing countries in internet and social networking sites for years People and their activities are controlled too much by internet sites nowadays, especially since social networking sites started up in Vietnam, a lot of internet users cannot help avoiding or refusing it The number of members on social networking sites grows too dramatically to discover and explore the reason behind it Understanding the influences of social networking sites to the youngster’s behavior, to the community, the society, many investors or businesspeople do not hesitate to learn from it and make it work on their business

Identifying the factors affecting the attitude toward participating in social networking sites in Vietnam can make people understand the foundation of a solid participation and carry out the appropriate switches for their further objectives As a result, those factors which have huge impact on the participation are Expected relationship and Community identification They can improve the efficiency of business

if people know how to apply

Figure 2.1 Conceptual model 18 Figure 3.1 Research process 23

Table 4.1 Sample Characteristic 30

Table 4.2 Reliability Test results 33

Table 4.3 KMO and Bartlett’s test 35

Table 4.4 Total Variance Explained 35

Table 4.5 Rotated Component Matrix 36

Table 4.6 KMO and Bartlett’s test 37

Table 4.7 Total Variance Explained 37

Table 4.8 Component Matrix 38

Table 4.9 Correlations 39

Table 4.10 Model Summary 39

Table 4.11 ANNOVA 40

Table 4.12 Coefficients 41

Table D1 Relationship 67

Table D2 Community 67

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

ABSTRACT

LIST OF FIGURES

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Research Background 1

1.2 Research Problem 3

1.3 Research Objectives 5

1.4 Research Scopes 5

1.5 Research Methodology 6

1.6 Structure of the research 6

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES 8

2.1 Social networking sites 8

2.2 Altruism 10

2.3 Expected relationship 12

2.4 Reputation 14

2.5 Community identification 16

2.6 Conceptual model and hypotheses 18

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 19

3.1 Research method 19

3.2.1 Informants of the study 19

3.2.2 Sample size and Sampling method 20

3.2.3 Measurement scale 21

3.3 Research process 23

3.3.1 Qualitative research 23

3.3.2 Quantitative research 25

3.3.3 Data analyzing 26

3.4 Data analysis method 27

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS 29

4.1 General characteristic of the research sample 29

4.2 The reliability test: The Cronbach’s alpha test 31

4.2.1 Altruism 31

4.2.2 Expected relationship 32

4.2.3 Reputation 32

4.2.4 Community identification 32

4.2.5 Attitude toward participating in social networking sites 32

4.3 Exploratory factor analysis 34

4.3.1 Factor analysis for the independent variables 35

4.3.2 Factor analysis for the dependent variables 37

4.4 Multiple regression analysis 38

4.5 Hypotheses assessment and discussion 41

5.1 Conclusion 45

5.2 Managerial implications 46

5.2.1 Expected relationship 47

5.2.2 Community identification 47

5.3 Limitations 48

REFERENCES 50

APPENDICES 56

Appendix A 56

Appendix B 59

Appendix C 63

Appendix D 67

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Research Background

According to Internet World Stats (2013), there were about 2,4 billion internet users as of 30 Jun, 2013 worldwide which increased nearly 85% compare with 361 million internet users worldwide in 2009 With the largest number, Asian has had 1,1 billion users especially in Vietnam, the number of internet users has been always in top

20 worldwide and the 8th place in Asian since 2010 with the ratio of above 30% population and being expected much more higher than that due to the low fares of internet (TP, 2012)

In addition, We Are Social, an organization located in England which specialize in researching social media globally, announced in their report at the end of October 2012 that Vietnam was the most interesting market in Asian with about 30,8 million people use internet, hold 34% the population of Vietnam while the average ratio of the world was 33% (TR.N, 2012) This data showed that the information technology in Vietnam has grown quickly and that internet became very important in people‟s lives The appearance

of internet provides great advantages for people to serve the society, business and education, entertainment, etc

In recent times, social media is getting more and more popular and integral not only in the globe but also in Vietnam Thus, it cannot help mentioning about social networking sites such as Facebook which have a big impact on Vietnamese people‟s lives As TR.N (2012) stated the number of Vietnamese members growing on Facebook was very impressive at the highest rate of 146% within 6 months Besides, there were

about 8.5 million Facebook users at the average age of 34 or lower and higher proportion for male members than female

Lim (2012) also mentioned Vietnam reached the highest growth of 55% in Asia as

of Quarter 2, 2012 Until August 2013, this number reached up to 19.6 million users, hold 21.42% population and 71.4% internet users (Ha Minh, 2013) It also said that people use their working hours to access Facebook and other social networking sites (Nguyen, 2014) The considerable development and prevalence of social networking sites just in a very short time made a lot of organizations cannot overlook this opportunity

However, being able to understanding the profound reasons of the participation of social networking sites, businesspersons need to know what people think and feel from different aspects of an issue Beneath the participation is the consciousness of benefits, analyzing human psychology toward the new trend can help the managers aware the factors affect to their success Applying suitable content marketing or integrated marketing for promotion strategy on social networking sites will bring the efficiency for their organization

Actually, there are many social networking sites in Vietnam such as Zing Me, tamtay, Linked in besides Facebook because the founders of each networking sites have their objective to create a site that could be suitable to different groups of people, e.g, teenagers or businesspersons The point is one person can join in many networks at the same time and also can create several accounts in one site Moreover, having many accounts on networking sites may lead to the overlap and whether or not it can bring more usefulness to the users

On the other hand, those who care for their personal interests can do variety of things on networking sites to serve for their own purposes As stated above, Vietnam has very impressive figures about the number of people using social networking sites, so, what makes people get into social networking sites that much and to increase the participation of people into social networking sites, what are necessary things?

Until now, the concept of social networking site is still fairly new but very prevalent in Vietnam The population using social networking sites mainly falls into the young generation including adults, teenagers and under Each of them may have at least

an account on a social networking site to update their status and exchange their information regularly Depending on their years of age, personalities and occupational properties, the users have more or less activities with it

Besides, the reason of joining in social networking sites stems from different causes, for instance, individuals care for personal interests, while organizations think about their business, do some PR activities to pose on social networking sites Depending

on particular purposes and objectives, each subject will develop their account in an

appropriate way They will considerably public their interesting information to attract more viewers than the others and encourage comments or shares

There is plenty of materials concern with social networking sites can be searched

in the internet; however, these studies mostly focus on the United States market For instances, Lenhart and Madden (2008) gave some findings on social networking sites about profiles and friendship management in teenagers They visit social networking sites daily or more often to keep in touch with the friends they see often (91

%) and the friends they seldom see (82%) There is 72% admitted they use the sites to make plans with friends, 49% use it to make new friends

Another study concludes trust and privacy are not matters within social networking sites, in the comparison of Facebook and MySpace (Dwyer et al., 2007) It is said that the necessity of using social networking sites is to share information and develop relationships, the only different thing is the attitude or behavior of members on each site Other studies were mentioning about others sides of social networking sites such as how risky it can bring (Ybarra & Mitchell, 2008) or its impact on lives (Hampton

et al., 2011), basically about statistical figures of social networking sites To sum up, these studies show many statistical data and its effects on society rather than present what kind of things affect to people‟s mind to make them participate in social networking sites

Since Vietnam has a diversified culture and unique traditions, there is transparently a gap between USA and Vietnam Furthermore, the youngsters are influenced by the knowledge, ideas from their fellows, the culture from outside Vietnam and different sources nowadays It affects powerfully to their mind, their recognition and

behaviors The theories or studies about this topic especially in Vietnam are consequently significant and need to be supplemented to comprehend how the rapid growth of social networking sites accounts for the society Therefore, this study is to examine the factors affect the attitude toward participating in social networking sites in Vietnam

sites and have created an account on it; otherwise, their answers are not qualified and cannot be used in the data analysis

1.5 Research Methodology

The research method that many researchers are using lately is the combination of qualitative and quantitative research It helps increase the accuracy and sufficiency of the study Applying qualitative research to collect the ideas and opinions allows the adjustment of the study is made While, the quantitative research guarantees many people take the survey and allows the researcher to carry out the data analysis with more reliable results

The author uses Statistical Package for the Social Science software (SPSS), an effective tool to analyze the data The first step is to study the Descriptive Statistics The second one is to test the reliability of the scales (Cronbach‟s Alpha), Factor Analysis Finally, the Regression is used to examine the relationship between independents variables and dependent variables

1.6 Structure of the research

The structure of the research consists of five chapters:

Chapter 1: Introduction

This chapter presents research background of the study, as well as, research problems, research objectives, research scopes

Chapter 2: Literature Review and Hypotheses

This chapter provides the literature review and previous studies Still, the conceptual model of the study and the hypotheses are also presented

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

In this chapter, the author introduces the method used to design and implement the research base on the research objectives and scopes, the processes of doing the research are also reported

Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Data Results

All the data collected from the survey are analyzed and translated in this chapter Depending on withdrawal results from the analyzing, each factor will be deeply discussed how it affects the attitude toward participating in social networking sites

Chapter 5: Conclusions, Implications and Limitations

Chapter 5 presents main conclusions and implications based on the results of the previous chapters, some suggestions for the improvement as well as the limitations of this study

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES

In this chapter, the author presents the literature review, the research model and the hypotheses of the research

2.1 Attitude toward participating in social networking sites

People live in this world need communication to make their lives colorful and interesting Every one of us communicate with other people for our own purposes, some simply do for what they want and like, some are expanding the relationship for another purpose Overall, people form up networking everyday naturally but do not even notice that is networking (Dulworth, 2008)

According to Boyd & Ellison (2007), the term “Social network sites” is used instead of “Social networking sites” to emphasize the relationship, the network is already created Social networking site is defined as a web-based service, one of communication tools that allow internet users to make up a profile Through this page, a user can public his or her information to other users In a refined way, users can choose whom they want

to share information Things make Social networking sites unique are that individual can meet unacquainted people, enable them to make visible their social networks Many participants of Social network sites do not need to meet new people but they contact or re-contact and communicate with someone they knew

Pempek et al (2009) state that Social networking sites are developed to foster the interaction in a virtual world Since internet has continuously developed and provides many benefits, many transactions are executed online, people just stay at home and let the internet do the job It makes life easier, it makes so many people involve in to be called

“netizen” Especially the appearance of Social networking sites give the better chances, convenient conditions for people to perform their personalities, inform their circumstances or what they are doing to friends, communicate with others to show their ego or image of kindness not the true emotions or feelings on that unreal world instead of facing the real life

However, there are so many participants prefer reading others‟ posts rather than giving replies or comments These ones do not concern much about presenting themselves but to know what life is going on and what people around them are doing No matter what methods or actions people use, social networking sites are still helpful for social lives

Kaplan and Haenlein (2009) also declare Social networking sites help users connect with each other by creating personal profiles, posing pictures or videos, making friends, sending messages and emails If people have more interesting activities on networking sites, it would be more appealing to others Accordingly, their friends could have more comments or talks about it, a good way to enhance the connection Whereas some need to strengthen the friendship they have in depth, some want to have more in width upon the friendships of their friendships Hence, the actual value of these social networking sites are on gathering relationships with a large number of people, then they can gain lots of benefits and have more relationships through extending the network of their contacts (Ferandez, 2007)

In addition, Kachinske (2009) indicates the fundamental objective of joining social networking sites is to intensify the supports from a group of people or many other groups

The demand of being supported is legitimate because everyone desires to have many more people to help and support for whatever done If there is a place to belong and to receive the supports, people would not hesitate to get in After all, the author knows it is crucial to understand how online communication relates to the development of the young generation and its necessity through studying the nature of online social networks (Subrahmanyam et al, 2008)

2.2 Altruism

One of rational requirements on action, altruism is a conception of ethics and a human nature, an important moral principle It depends on recognition of each person because no one has the same opinions or ideas about a problem (Nagel, 1970), they correspondingly acknowledge it in different ways and have various explanations Kohn (1990) also mentions, altruism is an extraordinary action, self-sacrificing action In his paper, Berkowitz (1972) indicates that altruism includes actions which are controlled by empathic thinking not by others‟ benefits

Bouhga-Hagbe (2006) defines altruism in a different way of financial assistance and remittance His argument is not closely relates to the ordinary altruism but generally

it is about the fundamental willingness of someone to help or assist others As well, Trivers assumes altruistic behavior is to benefit another one while the person does that behavior gain no benefit from that action and perhaps unfavorable (1971) When people want to make a better life, help others resolve problems and there is one thing facilitates them to implement their desire, the prevalence of networking sites gives them more opportunities, they possibly have the attitude toward using it

For Batson (1991), his concept bases on the comparison between altruism and egoism, the difference term of those two motives makes the definition that the social behavior expresses the desire to help other people without thinking of oneself, really comes from the motivation of benefit others is called altruism Batson believed the importance of understanding altruism is to bring up the potential to be more interconnected, get tied to one another and be able to understand human nature

This concept raises the degree of usefulness of participating in social networking sites for what it offers its members is the chance to conduct altruistic behaviors, to tighten the relationship Once someone does an altruistic action, he or she does not need any benefits or a pay-back action but hopefully to be treated as the same way Through recognizing the essence of altruism, people expect its outcomes influent to thoughts and behaviors of others later on

Having emotions, feelings, attitudes and behaviors is what human being Everything happens in life and be absorbed by human‟s brain is always reflected outside through the attitudes or emotions in another way Ajzen (2005) claims that attitude correspond with behaviors, good behaviors lead to positive attitude, bad behaviors lead to negative attitude

Recently, the social networking sites users spend their time on the sites to watch over their friends‟ activities and leave comments or chatting or talking Most of them say good words, do the nice things for their friends, share information and help each other Whether or not the reason people like to join in social networking sites is to have that

kind of things Accordingly, altruism has a positive effect on the attitude toward participating in social networking sites and the first hypothesis is raised:

H1: Altruism positively affects attitude toward participating in social networking sites

2.3 Expected relationships

Most people in a good relationship even friendship or partnership feel relief and comfortable when they sink in trust with someone belong to that relationship without thinking of any dreadful things could be done to them (Solomon and Flores, 2003) It can explain why many people want to make friends, retain the relationship, extend and expand it to earn more benefits from the others

From the sides of business, according to Lindgreen (2008), the concept of relationship is that companies do business with others not just because products or services being exchanged Having relationships is very useful for the buyer in case they need or change new supplier for better products or services Therefore, relationship is an intangible value that goes beyond normal exchanges Although this theory is not merely mentioning about “relationship”, it bases on primitive purpose of building relationship Everyone knows the effect of relationship on every fields, for that reason, they want to have strong relationship and rely on it Because it is not a thing emerge naturally but going through a process of searching from knowing to understanding, people have to put efforts to make it sustainable and durable The belief of having good relationships and interests is the foundation of participating in social networking sites where people really engage

Everybody wants to build up wide and diverse relationships with many types of people and it should be good relationships No one needs bad relationship since it can obstruct them from many opportunities, only good relationship is expected and encouraged for the good consequences Lin and Wu (2011) find that the relationship quality gave a big effect to the retention and quoted many theories For examples, Hennig-Thurau and Klee (1997) argued that relationship is an antecedent of repurchasing Many studies have also concluded a positive linkage between relationship quality and customer repurchase behavior (e.g., De Wulf et al., 2001; Gerpott et al., 2001; Ranaweera and Prabhu, 2003) They are the evidences for what relationship brings, its principle is not only in the purchasing issues but also in other issues Briefly, the expectation of a positive relationship is the demand of every person while social networking sites is very easy and convenient for its members to access and enhance quality of the relationship

Basically, good relationship impulses and motivates the repetition and mouth (Kim, Han and Lee, 2001) These positive effects help open more relationship from or base on the existing ones Many people are very clever in developing or strengthening relationship due to the realization of significance, from the present relationship to the additional one by “connecting, attracting and converting” non-relationship into relationship (Gordon, 2013, p 2) Consciously or unconsciously, converting a non-relationship into relationship is caused by previous relationship, as far

word-of-as the benefits exist, people cannot ignore the helpfulness of networking sites

The expectation of positive relationship makes people feel favorably toward the others (Hon and Grunig, 1999), they may earn lots things such as having new and good

friends, building firm relationships As a result, expected relationship leads to the following hypothesis:

H2: Expected relationship positively affects attitude toward participating in social networking sites

2.4 Reputation

The definition of reputation depends on the perspective of each person, altogether

it is still a natural part of our lives and integral to the society, what people think about the others and what firstly appears or bear in people‟s mind (Dalton and Croft, 2003) They also points out that integrating all elements of the communications brings critical benefits

to the reputation The message delivers to the community must be similar and consistent

so that the process of communication can build trust in the audiences and avoid ambiguity

In order to attain good reputation, forming a close connection with audiences has

to be done, understand what they expect and need in order to provide communication services (Genasi, 2002) There is no wondering when someone has reputation, people want to know more about him and any of his information is easier to be found These days, thanks to internet and social networking sites, people discover a lot of talent and special phenomenon, this paper is not writing about good cases or bad cases but to emphasize how quick and favorable social networking sites spread out the reputation The objective and destination of each person is different, some for their popularity or for their business, some for their further meaningful actions, if social networking sites offer them suitable engines, they would want to engrave their reputation in the community

Gottschalk (2011) states reputation is very different from each field or industry In comparison with manufacturing businesses, reputation of companies specialize in providing services is more important because their services are invisible Good reputation can help them attract customers or clients, good reputation enhance loyalty and support Normally, reputation is default as positive meaning, thus, when it is declined, people have to lift it up or it cannot be revived anymore Besides achieving reputation, social networking sites may help overcome recession when it causes mistakes and elevate in upper level All of these reasons are the source of attitude toward participating in social networking sites

Therefore, Greyser (1999) argues that enhancing the reputation is very important

In the era of severe competition, holding reputation is synonymous with losing reputation

as every organization, everyone tries their best to have more advantages than their rivals, refreshing reputation is very crucial Enhancing reputation is choosing, developing and maintaining the image or identity that people wish to present publicly (Carroll et al., 2001)

This argument presents a process of “reputating” but that process cannot be suspended, it should become a cycle of moving forward Since it can either promote or restrain the interactions between people, setting and maintaining reputation are very necessary (Emler, 1990) The term “maintaining reputation” can be considered as maintaining position of reputation, it is not simply keep the reputation but guarantee not losing the edge and advance With the same causes, the common tool as networking site

is more efficient

Reputation can be built under the participation, that is the fastest way for people to have prestige, gain trust, no matter what they need or expect in the future, it can be easier

to complete Acknowledging the usefulness of earning reputation, the below hypothesis is investigated:

H3: Reputation positively affects attitude toward participating in social networking sites

2.5 Community identification

Daniels states (2001), the term “community” can make people think about a group

of many people that can be formed up such as a town, or a neighborhood, etc “but it essentially suggests confluence and interdependence All communities share some degree

of identification arising from confluence and interdependence” (p 59) Depending on the scale and scope, community can be really big and complex, a city is called a community,

a country, a continent also

Community identification is defined as a belonging to the community, it plays a key role in the community (Hars and OU, 2002) Hsu et al (2012) believe that community identification is senses of people when they feel themselves really belong to the community and have the connection, the tie with others members The identification

is the specialty, the unique of an individual or an organization which really stands out compare to others Being a community and having community identification is to announce and confirm its presence and members of that community have the conscious

of it So, the significance of belonging is to be supported, interconnected in the

unification Consequently, social networking sites have it broaden support and equip powerful connection

Besides, the concept of community identification was declared clearly in the paper

of Shen and Chiou (2009) through following authors:

People who participate in a virtual community have a good conscious of membership and personal relationship with others in the community (Sproull and Faraj, 1997)

People have a lot of activities in the communities tend to visit it so often and may become an addict, a dependent person to that communities (Hiltz, 1984; Hiltz and Wellman, 1997)

When the similarities and interrelations have been founded, people may treat other members in the community like in their family and the commitment would get

firmer (Ellemers et al., 1999)

Many people is looking for a community where they belong to not just help them

do what they want to but also make them feel they are living in a right way, do the right things and be proud of it From this point of view, the desire of engaging in a community urges people to become a member of social networking site to get a chance being a part

of what they want and need

Thus, in some degrees, people have positive attitude toward other members by communicating or interacting with them, the next hypothesis is consequently proposed:

H4: Community identification positively affects attitude toward participating in social networking sites

2.6 Conceptual model and hypotheses

As per theories stated above, the conceptual model and hypotheses are formed from 4 independent variables Altruism, Expected relationship, Reputation and Community Identification:

Figure 2.1 Conceptual Model

There are four hypotheses in this research:

 H1: Altruism positively affects attitude toward participating in social networking sites

 H2: Expected relationship positively affects attitude toward participating in social networking sites

 H3: Reputation positively affects attitude toward participating in social networking sites

 H4: Community identification affects attitude toward participating in social networking sites

H4 H3

H1

H2

Attitude toward participating in social networking sites

Altruism

Reputation

Expected relationships

Community identification

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter reported the methodology the author used to do the research, including the source of the data, collection method and the analysis At this stage, the critical factors truly affect the attitude toward participating in social networking sites will

be indentified

3.1 Research method

In order to conduct the research, the model and measurement scale should be considered carefully for the appropriateness Because the mixed method has recently become a popular method to conduct a research (Creswell, 2002), the combination of qualitative and quantitative methodology should be used to deeply understand the ideas and collect the correct data and information Implementing a qualitative interview with a focus group including people who are familiar with and usually use Facebook or other social networking sites can help absorb new and different opinions on those factors The researcher can generate other ideas from other people and also understand deeper the issues he or she is processing through discussions and arguments After that, using quantitative interview is to have back more answers, responses from different people who have diversified background of ages, education, and employment This interview tests the population and allows the researcher modify the model base on overall feedback

3.2 Research design

3.2.1 Informants of the study

Nowadays, there are many people join in social networking sites and do a lot of activities with it such as chatting, making friends, promoting self-image, advertising, PR,

especially in Facebook, the site has a greatest number of participants Therefore, the subjects, the informants of this study are fairly extensive than other studies, the frame can

be expanded without any special requirements Within Vietnam and only for Vietnamese people, both male and female are acceptable; however, they must know about social networking sites and have at least an account on social networking site

3.2.2 Sample size and Sampling method

Preliminarily, the sample size for this study should be 200 people, the convenient sampling was also applied to increase the attendant probability in the survey and to possibly get around 150 - 180 results in return but due to time limit, it was not easy to reach that number The author received 131 questionnaires after eight times of sending the questionnaire to above 200 people including reminders In which, there were 4 respondents had no account social networking sites, they must be cleaned and 8 questionnaires lack of reliability are all given answer as “neutral” must be deleted

For the Exploratory Factor Analysis, Hair et al (2006) requested the size is larger than 100 and five times at least compare to the variables:

n > 100 samples and n = 5k (with k is the number of variables)

In that sense, the minimum samples needed for the research is 105 samples

For the Multiple Regression Analysis, Tabachnick and Fidell (1991) required the samples as follow:

n > 50 + 8m (with m is the independent variables) This means the minimum samples for multiple regression is 82 samples

Therefore, 119 questionnaires remaining after cleaning all unqualified answers were possible for running data analysis

3.2.3 Measurement scale

As stated above, this research consists of four attributes, combine ideas altogether and put them into a questionnaire of yes-no questions or multiple choices is not good enough and do not give the accuracy By this mean, a questionnaire base on likert scale ranging from 1- strongly disagree to 5 – strongly agree will fit this purpose the best Therefore, the author had to construct measurement scales for the appraising of the respondents

 Altruism was measured by 3 items borrowed from Hsu and Lin (2008):

I like helping other people through Social networking sites

Writing and commenting on Social networking sites can help others with their problems

I enjoy helping others through Social networking sites

 Expected relationship was measured by 5 items borrowed from Bock et al (2005):

Social networking sites would strengthen the tie between members

Social networking sites would create new relationships with new friends

Social networking sites would expand the scope of my association with others Social networking sites would draw smooth cooperation from outstanding users in the future

Social networking sites would create strong relationships with members who have common interests

 Reputation was measured by 3 items borrowed from Wasko and Faraj (2005):

I earn respects from others by participating in Social networking sites

Participating in Social networking sites would enhance my reputation

Participating in Social networking sites would improve my status in Social networking sites

 Community identification was measured by 4 items borrowed from Ashforth and Mael (1989):

I have more chances to meet members who have same interests when participating in SNS

Members on Social networking sites keep close ties with each other to share social lives and information

Members on Social networking sites have a strong feeling of “one group”

I am so proud of being a member of Social networking sites

 Attitude toward participating in social networking sites was measured by 3 items borrowed from Teo and Pok (2003):

I like participating in Social networking sites

I feel good about participating in Social networking sites

Overall, participating in Social networking sites brings many benefits

Creating the first questionnaire base on the preliminary scale when conducting the in-depth interview with a group of qualified people who know about social networking sites very well and have many activities on it with followers and subscribers makes it easier to generate more ideas The author interviewed six people to know if they can

understand the scale and explore other opinions or suggestions for the improvement of official questionnaire This step allowed the author supplementing and adjusting the questionnaire (See Appendix A)

The author redesigned the questionnaire according to the reviewing of comments and ideas or suggestions from those interviewees The questionnaire was structured into 3 parts for screening and classifying The first part is for screening, the respondents must know about Social networking site and have an account The second part was the main part of the research which focused on people perceptions of factors affect the attitude toward participating in social networking sites The third part was to classify demographic data such as gender, age, education and employment However, it was written in English while the study was carried out within Vietnam with Vietnamese people, so, before giving to the respondents, the author translated it into Vietnamese

At that moment, the revised questionnaire was used for the pilot test first This test was needed to know whether people can understand each question or misunderstand some things or not To check the contents and meaning of the words, there were 7 people already took this test In this stage, if anyone had other ideas or could not get it, the questionnaire had to be corrected again Fortunately, all of them committed to agreement that every question was easy to understand and there were nothing cause confusions After all, the final questionnaire was officially completed

Qualitative research is very important for the brainstorming and summarizes knowledge but carrying out the study with many people makes the view more general and sufficient That is why researchers need quantitative research

3.3.2 Quantitative research

Since collecting data as many as possible are necessary and the key point of the quantitative method, the official questionnaire was finished earlier must be issued widely

for the coming process

When the main research started, the first thing was to fix the time of recalling questionnaire results All of information must be in hand of the researcher within 2 - 3 months since the starting day of sending questionnaire The questionnaire of this research was delivered to the respondents in early of December, 2013 but actually it lasted more than 3 months to gather enough quantities of answers

In the condition of time limit, the communication method through email was reasonable and better Sending email will save time and cost and makes the respondents feel comfortable to answer the questions Collecting data through email took long time,

so, twice to three times or more reminders to the recipients helped increase the responses,

in this situation, the reminder happened every 3 weeks in average Posting the link of the survey on Facebook was a good way because its wide and convenient network helped collecting very quickly and four other members of Facebook also gave a hand to share that link to their contacts

As in the previous paragraph, the author already stated the convenient sampling was used and the author issued the questionnaire to the informants in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh at different period of time In the first two months, the author only issued and reminded the informants in Ho Chi Minh One month later, it was delivered to Hanoi So,

among 131 collected questionnaires, there were about 40 informants in Hanoi and 91 informants in Ho Chi Minh

Following the details of data cleaning, the errors including unqualified respondents and lack of reliability were removed turned the final sample to 119 observations

3.3.3 Data analyzing

The specific processes of data analysis will be declared in the next section This part only presents the encoding of the data with the scale given as below:

 Altruism

Altruism1 People tend to give comments for ones they are closed with

Altruism2 I like helping people through Social networking sites

Altruism3 Writing and commenting on Social networking sites can help

people with their problems Altruism4 I am willing to share ideas and advices on Social networking sites

without benefits

 Expected relationship

Relationship1 Social networking sites connect people together

Relationship2 Social networking sites could build up new relationship

Relationship3 Social networking sites would improve the relationship

 Reputation

Reputation1 Social networking sites help me get people‟s awareness

Reputation2 I earn respects from others by participating in Social networking

sites Reputation3 Participating in Social networking sites strengthens my reputation Reputation4 Participating in Social networking sites improves my status

 Community Identification

Community1 I have more chances to meet people who have same interests

Community2 Members on Social networking sites have close ties with each

other to share information Community3 Members on Social networking sites are always united and

supportive Community4 Members on Social networking sites are very close like a family

 Attitude toward participating in social networking sites

Attitude1 I like participating in Social networking sites

Attitude2 I am pleased with participating in Social networking sites

Attitude3 Participating in Social networking sites brings many benefits

The other steps of this stage will be reported specifically in the next section of this research

3.4 Data analysis method

All the data was analyzed by the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS)

18 Firstly, the descriptive statistic helped figure out the characteristics of the sample After that, by using Cronbach‟s alpha measurement and Exploratory Factor Analysis, the reliability of factors was tested and the conceptual model was assessed and modified For

more specifically, Cronbach‟s alpha is the most commonly used in internal consistency reliability testing which is above 0.6 and the higher, the more reliable Also, EFA is used when developing scale and to identify underlying relationship between measured variables Normally, the number of factors is less than the numbers of measures, therefore, a factor must represent a set of measures and at least three to five measures per factor for the accuracy Finally, Multiple Regression was conducted to test the relationship between independent and dependent variables to come up with an equation

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

In this chapter, the results of the research were reported The first thing was to sum

up the descriptive statistic of the sample After that, the reliability of the scales was accessed by Cronbach‟s alpha and EFA Finally, the author used the multiple regression analysis to test the model

There were 131 informants participated in the survey, the screening process exclude 4 informants have no account on social networking sites and 8 informants provided unreliable answers gave the researcher 119 respondents Among these respondents, 100% people are using Facebook and 5.9% people are using others networking sites such as Twitter, Linked in, Zingme, etc at once There were only 1 person visited networking sites 3-4 times per week, the others did it every day and more often up to 5 times per day

4.1 General characteristic of the research sample

Table 4.1 below showed the characteristic of the research sample that included

119 respondents with 58 male (48.7%) and 61 female (51.3%) The gap between male and female was really not big but it let people knew the women involved in this survey more than men

Most of the respondents in the years of age from 25-35 which accounted 64.7% of the total sample were 77 persons Second highest was 29.4% in the comparison with the total belong to the range from 15-25 years old Respectively, followings were 5% for the age above 35 and 0.8% for people under 18 years old