Online social networking: a study of facebook users in Vietnam

Online Social Networking: A Study of Facebook Users in Vietnam NGUYEN THI MAI TRANG University of Economics and Law - mai.ntmt2001@gmail.com NGUYEN THI THU HANG University of Finance a

Online Social Networking:

A Study of Facebook Users in Vietnam

NGUYEN THI MAI TRANG

University of Economics and Law - mai.ntmt2001@gmail.com

NGUYEN THI THU HANG

University of Finance and Marketing

Abstract

This study aims to examine the impact of students’ academic performance, influenced by stickiness, social capital, social trust and social self-efficacy, on their life satisfaction Using empirical data collected from 292 undergraduate students in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and structured equation modeling to test the validity of the proposed research model, the study provides new insights into social networking sites by exploring the negative impact between academic performance on students’ life satisfaction in the context of Vietnam Research findings support all hypotheses with positive relationships between constructs in the model, except for the relation between stickiness and academic performance These findings can provide education managers with useful strategies and tactics to enhance students’ life satisfaction

Keywords: Facebook; online social networking sites; academic performance; life satisfaction

1 Introduction

Social networking sites like Facebook are becoming a global phenomenon for online interacting with people to maintain connection with others (Chen, 2013) In the world, there are over 1.7 billion monthly active Facebook users which is a 15 percent increase year over year Furthermore, 1.13 billion people log onto Facebook daily active users for June 2016 (Zephoria, 2016) Facebook continues to reign in popularity over other social media channel In Vietnam, internet users are approximately 41 million users occupying 45.2% of the population (Kemp, 2015) They are also using different kinds

of social networking sites including Facebook (QandMe, 2014) to support communication and collaborative working because the services are providing Facebook users the most comfortable especially for the adolescent They are using Facebook to connect with friends, family and making new friends outside the country (Dao Le Hoa An, 2013) There is approximately 47% Vietnamese Facebook users are over 18 year old who spend about 3 hours/day for Facebook (QandMe, 2014) Whereas, at the end of the second quarter in 2014, there is about 660.000 Vietnamese students are now using a large amount of their time on Facebook They prefer to online social networking sites, especially Facebook “Some Vietnamese users would prefer living in a Vietnamese online society It's somewhat like you're entering your home, not a foreign one" (Huong, 2010) Using like or comment functions on Facebook will help Facebook users feel connected most of the time (No name, 2013) Previous study reveals that social capital is one of the main elements having effect on the motivation

of using Facebook fan page (Lin & Lu, 2011) The concept “motivation of using social networking site and Facebook” is replaced by “stickiness” (Yang & Lin, 2014) Whereas middle school children who are more satisfied with their life will have a stronger Grade Point Average and a stronger belief in school activities for their future (Lewis, Huebner, Malone and Valois, 2011) In addition, academic performance is likely contributed to students’ life satisfaction (Diseth & Samdal, 2014) This study will finally investigate the level impact of academic performance on students’ life satisfaction

In Vietnam context, some university professors are adopting social media for effective discussions and practicing, their students can deal with academic practices and improve learning benefits through social media communication tool, especially for marketing and informatics students (Nguyen Thi Tuyet Mai & Nham Phong Tuan, 2013) However, many arguments come to a conclusion that Facebook addiction strongly influences on children’s daily life activities, and academic performance (Dao Le Hoa An, 2013) Young Vietnamese in local universities who are game online addicted or overused of internet will have negative behaviors according to a report from Central of Mental advisory for Children and the Young - an affiliate of Vietnam National Mental Hospital 2 (Dao

Le Hoa An, 2013) They are spending time on Facebook and games online instead of focusing on studying (Nguyen Hoang Khac Hieu, 2015) Finally, their academic performance result become worse In addition, children are confirmed to be stress with life which should be investigated carefully (Le Minh Cong, 2013) In addition, students’ conscientiousness and self-management are among the factors can adjust students’ awareness of studying and their academic results (Pham Van Tuan, 2011) However, the number of research on negative results of Facebook using and its influencing on

university students’ life satisfaction remains limited (Le Minh Cong, 2013; Dao Le Hoa An, 2013; DeBrot, 2013)

Therefore, this study aims to examine the impact of some factors on university students’ life satisfaction Specifically, this study aims to investigate the relationship between social trust and social capital, social self-efficacy and social capital, social capital and stickiness, the impact degree of conscientiousness on the relationship of stickiness and academic performance, the impact degree of stickiness on academic performance and academic performance on life satisfaction In conclusion, this study is important because life satisfaction is suggested to be a good outcome of many other aspects in life (Lewis et al., 2011) The study’s results are useful for the educators and teachers, for managers and marketers and for students This paper is organized into five sections It begins with introduction section The next section describes literature reviews and research hypotheses The section research methodology section is used to empirically test the research model The fourth section presents the results of data analysis The final section discusses summarizes the study’s core findings, its contributions and its limitations

2 Literature Review

2.1 Social trust

Social trust reflects a bond that people share across society, economic and ethnic groups, religions and races It provides a foundation for a cooperative spirit that brings people together for common and mutually advantageous purposes This operationalization of social trust has been widely used for more than four decades in empirical studies and surveys around the world (Huang, Maassen & Groot, 2012) It places a foundation of trust for people to believe in someone, what they are dealing with or what they are going to face with In social networking environment, social trust is an important issue, it allows interpersonal interaction because the power of communicating and the interpersonal relationship could be gained from trust (Wu et al., 2012) In this study, social trust is the belief of Facebook users when they contact with people through available functions on Facebook site

2.2 Social self-efficacy

Social self-efficacy is the belief of people in their ability to organize and conduct actions In this study, self-efficacy indicates the level of individuals’ confidence to deal with stressor Thus, social efficacy can enhance interpersonal harmony and cooperation (Wu et al., 2012) Social self-efficacy adopted in this study is based on the self-self-efficacy scale revised by Wu et al (2012) It is commonly applied in domains such as social interaction and social relationship engagement among students studying abroad (Wu et al., 2012) It also supports the individuals’ confidence to interact with others and make new friends (Gecas, 1989; Wu et al., 2012) in an online environment such as Facebook Finally, social self-efficacy is treated as the confidence of individual to interact and make friends and use the online social networking site such as Facebook as a means of communication

2.3 Social capital

Social capital is social resources embedded in the social relationship network, as well as advantageous factor that helps to improve the carrying out of one’s social practices smoothly (Hong

& Jian, 2014) In addition, social capital focuses on the interactions of intra-community members, mutual assistance, mutual trust, and behavior norms, improving the overall development and performance of a community (Putnam, 2000) In general, Putnam (2000) also proposes two types

of social capital: bridging and bonding “Bridging social capital” is accommodative It occurs in social networks linking individuals of different backgrounds, providing opportunities for the exchange of new information or resources Bridging social capital is inclusive and happens by the integration of weak correlations between people from different networks (Hofer & Aubert, 2013) In contrast,

“bonding social capital” can be monopolized and occurs among personal acquaintances such as family members or close friends who provide both emotionally and physically mutual support for one another (Hofer & Aubert, 2013) As a result, social capital is the overall outcome of one’s interactions with others on Facebook, manifesting itself in the ability of individuals to exploit the function and resources available on Facebook in order to broaden relationships In this study, the scale measurement of social capital is adapted from Wu et al (2012)

2.4 Academic performance

Academic performance is evaluated by students’ self-reported for each subject completed during their year of studying Thus, it is measured by final course grade and cumulative Grade point average (GPA) (Hohmann & Grillo, 2014; Minimol & Angelia, 2015) The GPA is the key indicator to evaluate student’s academic performance In this study, GPA is considered as academic performance of student during the previous academic year

2.5 Stickiness

Stickiness means power of social networking sites or products to attract one individual either to retain or to start to use a product or to stay in social networking site (Yang & Lin, 2014) In online social networking environment, Thorbjornsen and Supphellen (2004) also indicate that there are two kinds of browsing behavior in a website They are frequency of visits and the duration of each visit Based on previous literature definitions, stickiness is defined the willingness to return and prolong the duration of staying on the Facebook web site as a communication tool (Yang & Lin, 2014)

3 Model and hypotheses

In the proposed model, social trust and social self-efficacy are both demonstrated positively to social capital in an attempt to build online relationships University students stick to Facebook site that affects their academic performance Students’ academic performance then influence life satisfaction Finally, conscientiousness moderates the relationship between stickiness and academic performance The proposed research model is presented in Figure 1

H1a

H3a H4

H1b

H2a H5

H3b H6

H2b

Figure 1 The research model

3.1 Academic performance and life satisfaction

Life satisfaction is defined to be people's subjective evaluation of how far their most important needs, goals, and wishes have been fulfilled (Cheung & Chan, 2009) While Diener (1984) defines life satisfaction as the global evaluation by people of their own life Previous studies found that life satisfaction is affected by some educational aspects (Diseth & Samdal, 2014; Cheung & Chan, 2009) However, research on the effects of various areas of education on life satisfaction is limited (Cheung & Chan, 2009) In their reseach, Cheung and Chan (2009) found that the longer time spent

in education, the higher is people’s life satisfaction Achieving higher level of education means to satisfy higher needs in personal achievement, therefore, people produces greater happiness and life satisfaction (Oishi, Diener, Lucas, & Suh, 1999) Diseth, Danielsen, and Samdal (2012) reported that students with the ages between 22 to 24 who have higher reported results for the subjects they studied during the academic year will report higher levels of life satisfaction In other words, academic achievement is likely to support students’ life satisfaction Therefore,

H6: Academic performance has a positive influence on life satisfaction

3.2 Stickiness and academic performance

Using social networking sites has a significantly effect on the young, especially their academic performance Bita, Seyed, Morteza, Mohammad, and Ali (2013) show that young adolescents spend much time on social networking site viewing and replying to their friends’ comments on their social network pages Then, they will spend less time for studying In addition, the use of social network time created anxiety and stress among students and finally affect the educational process Thus, the frequency of chatting on Facebook messenger and posting status updates of students are negatively predictive to final grade point average (Junco & Reynol, 2012) In Vietnam, using social networking site and games online have influence on high school students’ academic performance (Le Minh Cong, 2013) Furthermore, Facebook engagement has a strong impact on students’ learning outcomes

Social capital

Life Satisfaction

Social trust

Social

self-efficacy

performance

Consientiousness Bonding social

capital

Bridging social capital

(Nham Phong Tuan & Nguyen Thanh Tu, 2013) because they are easily distracted from their learning because of some interesting stories, comments and other activities on Facebook Therefore,

H5: Stickiness has a negative impact on academic performance

3.3 Social capital and stickiness

Social capital has a strong relationship to the matter of using social networking site such as Facebook in Vietnam (Hong & Jian, 2014) and it is considered the outcome of people’s interactions with other people on Facebook (Glass et al., 2014) Its ability is to exploit the resources available on Facebook which helps people to develop relationships In addition, social capital is conducted to place

an important role on the potential of the group and the patterns of relationships between individuals within a group and between groups with a focus on social networks (Dwiningrum, 2013) Bridging social relationship will to lead to the using and sharing on Facebook For example, the students in electronic group dynamics expanded from e-mail or Facebook exchanges to a multilayered complex exchange between a large of members from both groups who interact with each other regardless of their initial pairings (Rautenbach & Black-Hughes, 2012) Thus, Facebook or email facilitates a good foundation for students’ collaboration The youth uses Facebook to accumulate their social capital through learning, training, and engaging in advanced studies (Ahn, 2012; Hong & Jian, 2014) Furthermore, bonding social capital and bridging social capital can influence on people who use social networking site such as Facebook The bonding social capital and bridging social capital both influence followers on online networking environment (Hofer & Aubert, 2013) In this study, Facebook site is taken into consideration because of its strongest influential impact on Vietnamese online networking users (Dao Le Hoa An, 2013; QandMe, 2015) And bonding and bridging social capital are both positive influence on the intention to use Facebook (Peterson & Johnston, 2015) Finally, from the previous studies, the proposed hypotheses are following:

H3a: Bonding social capital has a positive influence on stickiness

H3b: Bridging social capital has a positive influence on stickiness

3.4 Social trust and social capital

At the individual level, people whose prevail form of social capital is the bonding one, or whose social networks are very sparse altogether (Growiec & Growiec, 2014) That is, the higher level of trust between parties or individuals, the better the outcomes of knowledge and information gain, which leads to innovation activity Information exchange is enhanced with strong trust in networks (Dakhli & De Clercq; Widen-Wulff & Ginman, as cited in Lee, Cho & Hwang, 2013) Moreover, positive trust on interpersonal relationships provide people with opportunities to support others and receive others' supports on social works and also on individual emotion (Snell & Janney, as cited in Liu et al., 2013) Trust provides a solid foundation for the cooperation of social capital (Huang, Maassen & Groot, 2011) Thus, social trust plays an important role in forming social capital Social trust can raise social capital and enhances the quality of education (Yamamura, as cited in Wu et al.,

2012) In addition, it is widely believed that trust may reduce interpersonal tension and conflict, then, they promote intra-community collaboration (Wu et al., 2012) It will finally enhance the interpersonal harmony and cooperation In conclusion, it is believed that social trust is one condition

of social capital and social trust positively influence on both bonding and bridging social capital The hypotheses are proposed:

H1a: Social trust has a positive influence on bonding social capital

H1b: Social trust has a positive influence on bridging social capital

3.5 Social self-efficacy and social capital

Social capital is needed in the emotional development of students such as building a sense of belonging, well-being and especially self-confidence (Dwiningrum, 2013) While previous theories about social self-efficacy come to a conclusion that it was the level of one individual’s confidence to overcome stress or things which seemed as obstacles in life including learning to use Facebook, and making new relationship with others In addition, social self-efficacy is an element to measure social capital (Ferri, Deakins, & Whittam, 2009) While social capital is considered the relationship of individuals to family, friends or strangers Social self-efficacy is the motivation of one individual to use Facebook to make new relationship in online social networking environment In conclusion, the role of social self-efficacy in social capital is the ability of individuals to understand and to use Facebook to broaden their online networking relationships (Wu et al., 2012) Based on the previous literature of social self-efficacy, it is seemed to be one individual’s confidence to interact, to make friends and to use the online social networking site such as Facebook as a mean of communication Social self-efficacy is conducted to have positive influence on social capital The hypotheses are proposed as following:

H2a: Social self-efficacy has a positive influence on bonding social capital

H2b: Social self-efficacy has a positive influence on bridging social capital

3.6 Conscientiousness and its moderating effect

Conscientiousness refers to the extent to which an individual is organized, careful and shows self-control (Junco & Reynol, 2012) In addition, conscientiousness makes individuals who are orderly, diligent and strive to achieve goals come over ones impetus In this study, conscientiousness is measured by six items and they are developed from Roose et al (2012) Martocchio and Judge (1997) point out that conscientiousness are found to be related to self-deception which affects negatively to learning in training sessions In particular, individuals who score high on conscientiousness may spend less time on social networking site because they may perceive time spend on social networking site creates a distraction and reduce their ability to achieve their goals (Junco & Reynol, 2012) A high level of conscientiousness has positively impact on the relationship between stickiness and academic performance, higher score of conscientious is less likely to be associated with emotional or physical problems relate to social network use (Glass et al., 2014) Highly conscientious workers without

emotional intelligence could demonstrate ineffective work performance (Goleman, as cited in Glass

et al., 2014) In contrast, highly conscientious and emotional intelligence workers can have higher performance score That is, in educational context, high conscientiousness group of students will have a higher academic performance result (Ceasar, Frink & Ferris, 2004) In Vietnam context, students’ conscientiousness is among the factors impacting on the students’ attitude toward their studying and their academic results (Pham Van Tuan, 2011) In this study, conscientiousness’s impact

is taken into consideration of the relationship between stickiness and academic performance This study uses conscientiousness as a moderator which has negatively impact on the relationship between stickiness and academic performance Thus, the hypothesis is proposed:

H4: The impact of stickiness on academic performance is lower for the group with a high level of conscientiousness than that of the group with a low level of conscientiousness

4 Research method

4.1 Data collection

Three hundred fifty questionnaires including 300 online surveys via Google survey and Facebook message, and 50 hard copies were distributed to students from universities in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam This study was used convenience sampling Three hundred questionnaires were received from distributing to 350 respondents Two hundred ninety two usable questionnaires were obtained from 300 questionnaires Finally, 292 valid questionnaires were utilized for further analysis

4.2 Measurements

The research model includes eight constructs including one second-order construct All items were adapted from the extant literature to improve content validity (Straub, Boudreau & Gefen, 2004) Three items for measuring social trust construct were adapted from Wu et al (2014) Four items were adapted from Wu et al (2014) to measure social self-efficacy Social capital was a second order construct The two first order construct were Bonding social capital and Bridging social capital Four and five items for each first order construct of social capital developed by Wu et al (2014) were adopted for this study Four items for measuring stickiness were adapted from the study by Yang and Lin (2014) Six items were adapted from Roose et al (2012) to measure conscientiousness Finally, seven items measuring life satisfaction were adopted from Chow (2005) All of the items were measured on 5-point scale that range from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5)

The questionnaire was originally developed in English into Vietnamese Eight in-depth interviews with university students were conducted to assess its logical consistency, ease of understanding, and contextual relevance by one of the authors

After this step, the final questionnaire was divided into two sections The first section explored respondents’ use of Facebook by using a screening question The screening question was “Do you use Facebook?” The respondents would answer the screening question before answering the

questionnaire If they answered “No”, they are not allowed to answer the next part of the questionnaire The final questionnaire included seven constructs and thirty four items There were total seventeen items were revised follow the interviewee’s comments

5 Analysis and results

There were 350 questionnaires were sent to respondents from 33 universities in Ho Chi Minh City Total 292 valid questionnaires were gathered There were 58 surveys missing some information and not used for data analysis The results of the demographic analysis were shown in Table 1 Female gender was represented with 64.73% respondents and 35.27% were male Year of study represented with 38.01% third year, 31.85% fourth year, 29.45% second year Major of respondents came from UFM occupying 53.42% In addition, there were 92.12% of respondents spending more than 1 hour

a day for Facebook, there were only 7.88 % of respondents answered that they spent less than 1 hour for Facebook a day In summary, respondents are widely diverse by year of study, university, and gender

5.1 Scales validity

All measurement scales was tested with Cronbach’s Alpha except academic performance variable because it is a quantitative variable All scales were satisfied the requirement of reliability with values higher than 7 However, there was one item in Life Satisfaction named LS4 scale was deleted because

it had corrected item-total correlation lower than 3 (Nunally & Berstein, 1994) The skewness values within (-.858 to 265) and the kurtosis values within (-.994 to 458) were all satisfied the range [-1; 1] Therefore, maximum likelihood was used (Muthen & Kaplan, 1985) and the reliability of the multi-item scales was accessed by computing composite reliability coefficient and extracted variance for each construct (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988)

Social capital was a second-order construct The CFA result indicated that the measurement model

of social capital received an acceptable fit of data: Chi-square = 50.387, df = 26 (p-value = 003), CMIN/df = 1.938 In addition, the CFI = 977, GFI = 962, TLI = 0.968 were higher than 9 (Bagozzi

& Yi, 1988) and RMSEA = 057 lower than 08 (Nguyen Dinh Tho & Nguyen Thi Mai Trang, 2008) Moreover, all factor loading of all variables had values higher than 6 and significant Hence, the scale had convergent validity The composite reliability of bonding and bridging social capital in turn were .774 and 842 and higher than 5 which satisfied the reliability standardized CFA result showed that the relationship between bonding social capital and bridging social capital was less than 1.0 (Steenkamp & Van Trijp, 1991) which indicating discriminant validity of these two groups In conclusion, the above findings indicate that the scales measurement social capital were uni-dimensional and the within method convergent validity achieved

Table 1

Measurement correlations, composite reliability and AVE

Reliability AVE

Square root of AVE

2 Social

Self-efficacy

3 Social capital 43 392 1.00 Bonding SC: 774 462 680

Bridging SC: 842 518 720

5 Academic

performance

.004 092 023

-.200 1.00

6 Life satisfaction 109 257 232 -.001 234 1.00 802 451 672 Notes: All correlation were significant with p = 000, Model measurement fit: Chi-square = 438.34, df = 283, chi-square/df = 1.549, p = 000, GFI = 896, TLI = 931, CFI = 940, RMSEA = 043

A saturated model was generated to test convergent validity and discriminant validity for all constructs of research model All of the items’ factor loadings were higher than 5 and had convergent validity except LS3 in Life satisfaction (factor loading = 455) Then, LS3 was eliminated The research model was analyzed by CFA again The model fit values were better with GFI of 896 The TLI and CFI values also increased correspond with 931 and 940 (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988) While RMSEA value decreased to 043 lower than 08 (Nguyen Dinh Tho & Nguyen Thi Mai Trang, 2008), the chi-square/df was also decreased to 1.549 All of the factor loadings for the items were higher than 5 and had convergent validity After deleting LS3, all of the model fit values were better CFA analysis result presented that relationships between constructs in research model were different from 1.00 indicating discriminant validity (Steenkamp & Van Trijp, 1991) These values are showed in Table 2 All of the estimated correlation relationships were lower than 1.0 with p-values were all 000 and significant In addition, the composite reliability of the measurement constructs from 762 to 842 and higher than 7 The AVE value of social self-efficacy, social capital, stickiness and life satisfaction were a bit below 5, however, it generally supported convergent validity (Fornell & Larcker, 1981) The minimum AVE value was 446 and higher than the largest correlation of 43 (Chin, 1998; Fornell

& Larcker, 1981) Thus, the measurement had discriminant validity

There were five hypotheses H1 (H1a and H1b), H2 (H2a and H2b), H3 (H3a and H3b), H5, H6 were tested through structural model (Figure 2) Maximum likelihood method was applied, the chi-square/df = 1.629 less than 2, the RMSEA = 046 less than 08 The CFI and TLI were correspondent .929 and 0.921 and higher than 9 The GFI = 0.890 and slightly lower than 9, however, the model was able to be accepted