The Uses and Gratifications Theory , Subjective Norm , and Gender in Influencing Students ’ Continuance Participation Intention in LinkedIn

This research investigated how subjective norm and motives from Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT) affected continuance participation intention. In addition, this research examined the role of gender as a moderating variable in the relationship. A moderated regression analysis was conducted on a sample of 246 respondents selected by purposive sampling technique. The result indicates that subjective norm, all uses, and gratifications motives in the model (information seeking, self-discovery, maintaining interpersonal connectivity, social enhancement, and entertainment value) affect continuance participation intention of female students. For male students, information seeking does not significantly affect continuance participation intention. Subjective norm affects male students more strongly than female students. Then, information seeking affects female students more than male students. This research adds more insights into the literature on continuance participation intention, particularly on the role of gender.


INTRODUCTION
Social Networking Service (SNS) is a virtual community website.People who are separated by time and space can share interests, and build relationships (Chang, Hung, Cheng, and Wu, 2015).Moreover, gaining users' continuance participation is important for continued growth (or survival) of the information systems including social networking sites.Al-Debei, Al-Lozi, and Papazafeiropoulou (2013) reported that some SNSs had declined due to their inability to retain their users to engage in long-term activities.The decline of some SNSs highlighted the importance of users' continuance participation toward growth and survival of SNS (Chang et al., 2015;Chiu, Cheng, Huang, & Chen, 2013).Therefore, it is imperative for SNSs to understand the factors that affect users' continuance participation.By understanding the factors that affect continuance intention, SNSs can design their systems in a way that will make users continue using it and achieve continued presence on the Internet.
One of the SNSs is LinkedIn.Although it is intended primarily for professionals, LinkedIn memberships also include students.LinkedIn (2016) reported 40 million students as a part of its global membership.However, this number is relatively small compared to the total of LinkedIn users.This number is also not negligible, as they can influence others to adopt and use the service.In addition, students can become potential revenue contributors to LinkedIn through paid features in the future as they join the work.Thus, understanding the factors that affect the students' continuance participation intention can be important to grow LinkedIn's user base and future revenue.
The previous research focused on a more general SNS such as Facebook characterized by hedonic values by Pai and Arnott (2013) and Park, Kee, and Valenzuela (2009).On the other hand, LinkedIn is more oriented toward career-building or professional networking SNS.It may be argued that the utilitarian value characterizes LinkedIn.Hence, this research contributes to the extending SNS studies to a different type of SNS, and to a specific type of user base (students), which is not its primary target user.To the researchers' knowledge, research that focuses on SNS aims for professional networking such as LinkedIn with students as focused users are still relatively scarce.
Al-Debei, Al-Lozi, and Papazafeiropoulou (2013) and Ifinedo (2016) suggested that the needs gratified by the system might influence the decision to continue using a particular information system be influenced by the needs gratified by the system.Moreover, previous research has also documented evidence that gender moderates the relationship between obtained gratifications and continuance intention in SNS (Krasnova, Veltri, Eling, & Buxmann, 2017).The impact of subjective norm on intention has also been reported to be different across genders (Hwang, 2010;Venkatesh & Morris, 2000).
Figure 1 presents the conceptual model.Research model in this research incorporates Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT) and subjective norms in explaining continuance participation intention.According to Al-Debei, Al-Lozi, and Papazafeiropoulou (2013), continuance participation intention in using an information system is distinct from the initial acceptance or adoption of the system.To maintain that continuance participation or use intention, post-adoption behavior should be driven by some factors such as experience and perceived value.
Then, continuance participation intention is chosen as the dependent variable since the population of interest is university students who have used LinkedIn.In addition, this research intends to focus on their future intention to use LinkedIn by reflecting the postadoption behavior as suggested by Al-Debei, Al-Lozi, and Papazafeiropoulou (2013).
Based on the researches on SNS, the researchers suggest that UGT factors (information seeking, selfdiscovery, maintaining interpersonal connectivity, entertainment value and social enhancement) may affect continuance participation intention in using LinkedIn.According to Dholakia, Bagozzi, and Pearo (2004), people participating in a virtual community derive informational value.It is a value that participants get from getting and sharing information in a virtual community and from knowing what other people think.Ku, Chu, and Tseng (2013) suggested that information is one of four primary needs for participating in an SNS.Meanwhile, Orchard, Fullwood, Galbraith, & Morris (2014) said that information exchange was one of the primary motivations for using an SNS.Thus, the first hypothesis is as follows.
H1 : Information seeking is positively associated with continuance participation intention Then, Dholakia, Bagozzi, and Pearo ( 2004) proposed that self-discovery involved understanding and deepening prominent aspects of one's self through social interactions.Furthermore, they suggested that self-discovery drove users to interact with others to gain access to social resources.It is needed to attain personal goals and to help the person to form, define, and elaborate on one's preferences, tastes, and values.Thus, the second hypothesis is as follows.H2 : Self-discovery value is positively associated with continuance participation intention According to Ku, Chu, and Tseng (2013), maintaining interpersonal connectivity refers to social benefits from establishing and maintaining contact with other people.They also highlighted the insights gained from previous researches that students used SNS to maintain the relationship with friends, family, and other people.The third hypothesis is as follows.
H3 : Maintaining interpersonal connectivity is positively associated with continuance articipation intention Next, entertainment value refers to the fun and enjoyment that a person experiences from interaction with other people in an online network (Ku, Chen, & Zhang, 2013).Entertainment has been mentioned as one of the primary motives for using computermediated media such as SNS (Ifinedo, 2016;Krause, North, & Heritage, 2014;Ku, Chen, & Zhang, 2013).Then, Wang, Jackson, Wang, and Gaskin (2015) agreed that students saw SNS as having the recreational function (relaxing entertainment) and social function social interaction).Meanwhile, Choi (2016) revealed that SNS users also fulfilled their entertainment needs from consuming SNS news.This indicates that SNS can entertain users through the provision of informational contents.Thus, the fourth hypothesis is as follows.

H4 : Entertainment value is positively associated with continuance participation intention
According to Ifinedo (2016), the desire is to connect with other people and enhance one's social worth motivate engagement in online services.Liu and Baumeister (2016) stated that it was a desire to seek attention and to be admired by other people by revealing self-promoting information and managing contents displayed in their SNS profile.Those might be a relevant motive for using SNS.However, Seidman (2013) agreed that SNS users could enhance their image by disclosing their personal information such as photographs and profile information.
In LinkedIn, students may engage in social enhancement by enhancing their profile by showcasing education, achievement, and experience on their LinkedIn page to people in his/her network.It is with the intention to impress others particularly future employers.The researchers also suggest that having LinkedIn profile can also enhance a student's image.The fifth hypothesis is as follows.

H5 : Social enhancement is positively associated with continuance participation intention
Initially, the subjective norm is proposed as part of the theory of planned behavior.It has been used in previous research to explain continuance participation intention (Hajli, Shanmugam, Powell, & Love, 2015;Ku, Chen, & Zhang, 2013;Mouakket, 2015).In new technology adoption, the information from reference groups such as family or friends is important to influence adoption decision by a person without prior usage experience (Cheung, Chiu, & Lee, 2011).Ku, Chen, and Zhang (2013) stated that subjective norm encouraged members of specific groups to conform to the group's norms to become part of in-group.Thus, when a person's reference group strongly recommends continued use of a particular SNS, he or she may choose to accept and comply with the group's opinion and continue using SNSs.The sixth hypothesis is as follows.

H6 : Subjective norm is positively associated with continuance participation intention
The difference between men and women in information systems has been documented.Sin and Kim (2013) reported that men and women had differences in SNS-related behaviors such as frequency of posting, time spent on SNS, and purposes.A more recent study by Khan (2017) showed that men and women exhibited the different tendency toward commenting, disliking, and sharing YouTube videos.Moreover, men and women have different behaviors in information seeking.Magnuson and Dundes (2008) found that women tended to share more personal information on SNS than men.
Meanwhile, Lu and Hsiao (2009) showed that women were more willing to share personal information on their blogs due to a higher needs for self-expression.Therefore, it can be hypothesized that information seeking's effect on continuance participation intention will be more profound for women than for men.
Then, women's communication pattern is also proposed to be more focusing on relational interdependence (Krasnova et al., 2017).It is reflected in close relationships and interactions.Then, Orchard et al. (2014) found that women were more motivated to use SNS to maintain social relationships.
According to Dholakia, Bagozzi, and Pearo (2004), self-discovery motivates users to interact with others.It is to gain access to social resources needed to attain personal goals and to help the person to form, define, and elaborate on preferences, tastes, and values.The researchers propose that self-discovery motive will be more prominent for women than men due to women's focus on relational interdependence.Furthermore, women's focus on relational interdependence will also make maintaining interpersonal connectivity more prominent for women than for men.
Based on the information explained, the hypotheses are as follows.
H7 : Information seeking will have a stronger positive association with continuance participation intention for women than for men.H8 : Self-discovery will have a stronger positive association with continuance participation intention for women than for men.
H9 : Maintaining interpersonal connectivity will have a stronger positive association with continuance participation intention for women than for men.
Moreover, Teppers, Luyckx, Klimstra, and Goossens (2014) agreed that female SNS users had a higher score of entertainment motive than male SNS users.In previous researches, those suggest that men and women equally use SNS for specific forms of social enhancement.They will put information on social media to make them appear attractive and successful (Krasnova et al., 2017).Krasnova et al. (2017) and Dhir, Pallesen, Torsheim, and Andreassen, (2016) indicated that men and women used a different approach to attain self-enhancement such as the different use of selfies.Thus, it is logical to propose that the impact of social enhancement on continuance participation intention does not vary between genders.The hypotheses are as follows.H10 : Entertainment value will have a stronger positive association with continuance participation intention for women than for men H11 : Gender does not moderate the association between social enhancement and continuance participation intention Venkatesh and Morris (2000) stated that women were more susceptible to social norms than men.It is because women were more people-oriented, more motivated by needs for affiliation, interpersonal relationships, and greater awareness of others' feelings to promote the harmonious functioning of groups.They also suggested women were more attentive and responsive to social cues in the environment.They subsequently used the cues as opportunities to learn more about their abilities, which consequently making women more willing to consider other people's opinion of new technology.Then, Hwang (2010) found that gender moderated the impact of social norms on the e-commerce system adoption decision.The influence of social norms was stronger in the female group than in the male group.The last hypothesis is as follows.
H12 : Subjective norm will have a stronger association with continuance participation intention for women than men.
Specifically, this research aims to examine the factors that influence continuance participation intention of university students on LinkedIn.The researchers apply Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT) and subjective norm as the research framework.In this research, the researchers adopt the model proposed by Ifinedo (2016) and extend it further by incorporating gender as a moderating variable.

METHODS
Measurement items used are adapted from previous researches in Table 1.All measurement items are translated to Bahasa Indonesia using back-toback translation, and the wording accuracy is checked before it is administered to the respondents.Initial reliability testing is carried out.All items indicate that Cronbach's alpha is over the minimum level of 0,6 during the exploratory stage as prescribed in Hair, Black, Babin, and Anderson (2014).
Following the pre-test, the main survey is conducted among university students in a state university located in Jakarta.The students have an active LinkedIn account.Respondents are sampled using purposive sampling due to unavailability of the sampling frame and specificity of target respondents (LinkedIn users).The final sample of 246 respondents with complete questionnaire is used in data analysis.The summary of respondents' demographic profile is in Table 2.Meanwhile, Table 3 provides a summary of the reliability analysis.
As can be seen in Table 2, there is an equal number of male and female respondents with slightly more than 50% of respondents with the 20−21-yearold group.Regarding the membership length, more than 60% of respondents have used LinkedIn between 6 and 24 months.
Reliability testing results are described in Table 3.Meanwhile, the means, standard deviation, and correlations are described in Table 4.All measures are satisfied with the minimum level of Cronbach's alpha of 0,7.The researchers also include 95% of Confidence Interval (CI) for Cronbach's alpha.Based on 95% of CI, all subscales demonstrate lower bound which is higher than 0,70.Thus, it establishes the acceptable reliability level.
In addition to Cronbach's alpha, to ensure the adequate reliability and validity, the researchers conduct factor analysis with direct oblimin rotation in R Statistical Program (R Development Core Team, 2011) using package Psych (Revelle, 2018).All indicators loaded are clearly on its factors with no factor loadings less than 0,32, and no cross-loadings are above 0,32 as suggested by Tabachnick and Fidell (2013).
The square root of AVE for each construct can be obtained from diagonals in Table 4.Meanwhile, the off-diagonal figures show intercorrelations between constructs.It shows that all constructs have the higher square root of AVE than 0,70.Then, all square roots of AVEs in the diagonals are higher than correlations between constructs.These results indicate the achievement of convergent validity and discriminant validity (Fornell & Larcker, 1981).
Following the reliability analysis, the researchers applied multiple regression analysis.Multiple regression analysis is used since it can provide a mean to assess the degree and relationships between dependent and independent variables (Hair et al., 2014).In addition, multiple regression analysis allows the researchers to include moderating variables in the regression model by mean of dummy variable specification.The Uses and Gratifications Theory, ..... (Reiza Bani Paftalika; Arga Hananto)

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Multiple linear regression is carried out to analyze the effect of subjective norm, information seeking, self-discovery, maintaining interpersonal connectivity, social enhancement, and entertainment value toward continuance participation intention with gender as the moderating variable.Following suggestion from Shi, Lee, Cheung, and Chen (2010), Chang andZhu (2012), andZhao, Stylianou, andZheng (2013), the researchers include age and length of membership to control for continuance participation intention.
Based on the results, all hypothesized main effects are significant except for H1 (information seeking).Hypothesis testing of moderating variable is assessed by looking at the significance of the interaction terms and followed by simple slope analysis as prescribed by Cohen, Cohen, West, and Aiken (2013) Then, the results from Table 5 suggest that two interactions are significant.Those are gender and subjective norm (standardized β=-0,222, t=-3,21, p<0,001), and gender and information seeking (standardized β=0,152, t=2,289, p<0,05).To analyze the moderation further, the simple slope is conducted using the Pequod package (Mirisola & Seta, 2016) in the R statistical program.The results are shown in Figure 2 and 3. Figure 2 indicates that information seeking affects continuance participation intention for female students (slope=0,233, t(233)=2,72, p<0,01).However, the result is different for male students (slope=-0,0139, t(233)=-0,18, p=0,861).The positive regression coefficient for the interaction in Table 5 indicates support for H7.
Meanwhile, Figure 3 indicates that continuance participation intention of both genders tends to increase as subjective norm increases (slope for male group=0,448, t(233)=6,21, p<0,001; slope for female group=0,150, t(233)=2,32, p<0,05).However, the social norm effect on continuance participation intention is higher on male students.Moreover, this result shows that H12 is not supported since the direction of the relationship turns out to be different from the hypothesized relationship.
The purpose of this research is to examine what factors motivate college students to use LinkedIn.The results highlight the importance of the subjective norm.This implies that an individual highly regards acceptance from people.Thus, it results in perceived pressure to follow the acceptance and consequently stimulate the individual's continued use or participation in the SNS.
Subjective norm (Model 1: β=0,270, p<0,001; Model 2: β=0,446, p<0,001) significantly affected continuance participation intention.According to Cheung, Chiu, and Lee (2011), in the context of new systems that the new users do not have direct experience, advice from reference groups is important to influence their usage decision.At first, college students may not be aware of LinkedIn.After their reference group strongly endorse the SNS, they may choose to comply or set up the account, and subsequently continue to use the SNS.
Previous researches regarding SNS have also mentioned that normative influences positively affect behavioral intention to use SNS (Ifinedo, 2016;Ku, Chen, & Zhang, 2013).This process highlights the importance of reference groups to support an SNS and encourage college students to keep using the SNS.
In Model 2 (moderated regression model in Table 6), male and female students are affected by the subjective norm.However, the effect of subjective norm on continuance intention is stronger for male students than for female students.This is contrary to the hypothesized relationship.Sasson and Mesch (2016) found a stronger effect of peer influence on boys' risky online behavior.Thus, they suggested that young men were more susceptible to peer influence.
Moreover, Krasnova et al. (2017) suggested that from the early age, boys were encouraged to be independent, assertive, and competitive, which strengthened their desire to keep up with others.This desire to keep up with the others might explain male students' susceptibility to the subjective norm.Zhang, Guo, Lai, Guo, and Li (2014) found a similar result that the effect of endorsement from influential or important people would have a stronger effect on men's intention to adopt an information system.
Moreover, the results reveal that students use LinkedIn for the same motivations as the other SNS.Those are entertainment, self-discovery, social interactions, social enhancement, and information seeking.
Entertainment carries a significant role in shaping continuance participation intention.According to Pai and Arnott (2013), the fulfillment of entertainment needs is a crucial requirement for SNS users.This research is also consistent with previous research that indicated people used SNS to gratify social interactions, entertainment needs, selfdiscovery, and social enhancement (Cheung, Chiu 2014; Ifinedo, 2016).Social enhancement is also significant in predicting continuance participation intention.However, it has lower standardized β than entertainment and self-discovery.This research also supports the researches showing social enhancement as one of the significant gratifications for using SNS such as Facebook (Chen & Kim, 2013;Cheung, Chiu, & Lee, 2011;Hsu, Tien, Lin, & Chang, 2015) Compared to UGT factors, the students' LinkedIn continuance participation intention is more driven by subjective norm (complying with reference group endorsement), entertainment (browsing LinkedIn profile and contents to pass the time and seek escapism), and self-discovery (learning and understanding about themselves) than social enhancement motives.This is because students currently have low needs to market themselves in the job market as they have not graduated yet.this changes over time as they reach graduation and enter the job market.It can be verified through a longitudinal study that analyzes whether motivations to continue using LinkedIn changes as students are in early career employees and beyond.
In the moderated regression model, the role of information seeking in affecting continuance participation intention depends on the gender.Interaction terms in Table 6 (standardized β=0,150, t=2,237, p<0,05) and simple slope in Figure 2 indicate that the effect of information seeking is stronger on female students than male students.This finding is in line with previous research and theories.It suggests that women tend to share more information than men.It is because women's communication orientation focuses on relational interdependence which is reflected in close relationships, interactions, and information sharing (Krasnova et al., 2017).
Besides the significant independent variables and moderating variables, the control variable (age) is also significant as the predictor of continuance participation intention.The finding suggests that continuance participation increases as age increases.This result indicates LinkedIn as a social networking site for professionals, that becomes more relevant to people as they approach graduation age.New university students around 18−19 years old may not see LinkedIn's benefits.However, as they approach graduation or enter the postgraduate study around 22−24 years old, they see LinkedIn as the useful thing to help their career after graduation.
This research has several limitations.First, the sample is limited to college students from a state university in the Greater Jakarta area.Thus, the findings need to be validated in the other samples.Second, this research only focuses on LinkedIn in general regardless of the medium used.There may be a different insight that can be derived by segmenting the LinkedIn users by the medium used to access it such as mobile phone or laptop/desktop.Those two media may offer different usage experience for the users.Third, the findings of the moderating effect of gender may need further investigation.Besides validating the findings, understanding why the effect of the subjective norm is stronger on male students and why the effect of information seeking is stronger on female students may be carried out.

CONCLUSIONS
This research incorporates subjective norm and UGT to investigate the factors that affect college students' intention to continue participating in LinkedIn.This research has found that subjective norm, information seeking, entertainment value, maintaining interpersonal connectivity, self-discovery, and social enhancement drive students' intention.Gender can moderate the relationship between subjective norm and continuance participation intention and between information seeking and continuance participation intention.Although these findings still need further validation, this research has contributed to highlight some factors that help practitioners to understand the motivations of college students to continue participating in a particular purpose SNS such as LinkedIn.
This research has several limitations.First, the sample is limited to college students from a state university in the Greater Jakarta area.Thus, the findings need to be validated in the other samples.Second, this research only focuses on LinkedIn in general regardless of the medium used.There may be a different insight that can be derived by segmenting the LinkedIn users by the medium used to access it such as mobile phone or laptop/desktop.Those two media may offer different usage experience for the users.Third, the findings of the moderating effect of gender may need further investigation.Besides validating the findings, understanding why the effect of the subjective norm is stronger on male students and why the effect of information seeking is stronger on female students may be carried out.
Future research can investigate further the role of gender in moderating the relationship between UGT and continuance intention.It can be by replicating the research in using more diverse sample such as university students from different universities.In addition, future research can include satisfaction as a mediating variable as suggested by Dağhan and Akkoyunlu (2016).

R 2
Figure 2 Moderating Effect of Gender (Independent Variable: Information Seeking, Dependent Variable: Continuance Participation Intention)

Figure 3
Figure 3 Moderating Effect of Gender (Independent Variable: Subjective Norm, Dependent Variable: Continuance Participation Intention)

Table 1
Measurement ItemsInstruction to respondents: Please indicate to what degree you disagree/agree with the following statements by choosing the number in the scale that reflects your opinion on each statement the best

Table 3
Reliability Analysis Result (Main Sample) *based on raw alpha

Table 4
Means, Standard Deviation, Correlations, and Square Root of AVE Note: diagonal figures indicate Square Root of AVE

Table 5
Summary of Multiple Regression Analysis Results