Social Network Services(SNS) allow its users to make relationships with one another so as to form ego-centric networks in which 'I' becomes the center. Many enterprises have recently rushed into SNS like Facebook or Twitter to communicate and build re...
Social Network Services(SNS) allow its users to make relationships with one another so as to form ego-centric networks in which 'I' becomes the center. Many enterprises have recently rushed into SNS like Facebook or Twitter to communicate and build relationships with customers. Despite the excitement and competition about utilizing SNS for marketing communication purposes, however, our knowledge of how information is shared and its credibility is formed in such networked environment is far from sufficient.
Previous research on information credibility has focused mainly on the content of the message or the expertise of the information source, but rarely inquired into how the characteristics of an environment affect information credibility and its likelihood of diffusion. Given that SNS creates a networked environment, it seems important and necessary to understand how the environmental characteristics of SNS interact with message and source characteristics to form information credibility.
This study examines how the effects of information source expertise on SNS users' perceived credibility of and intent to share information vary depending on the way users perceive their surrounding networks -- perceived degree of homophily and centrality. The findings show that, first, users' perceived degree of centrality in the network of SNS has a positive main effect on the sharing intention. Also, secondly, users' degree of perceived network centrality was found to have an interaction effect with their perceived degree of homophily on information sharing intention. Finally, a three-way interaction effect among source expertise, perceived network centrality, and perceived homophily was found statistically significant. This means that the interaction effects between centrality and homophily on information sharing intention varied depending on the level of source expertise.