USERS’ EMOTIONAL CONNECTEDNESS TO FACEBOOK AND THEIR ATTITUDES TOWARDS FACEBOOK ADVERTISEMENTS

This study investigates the association between the emotional connectedness to Facebook, a popular online social network site, and the users’ attitudes towards Facebook advertising. Gender differences were used to moderate the users’ emotional connectedness to Facebook as males and females. A Pearson’s correlation and a linear regression analyses conducted on results from a survey of undergraduate students suggest a strong relationship between the emotional connectedness to Facebook and the users’ attitudes towards Facebook advertising. Such relationship is found stronger in females than males.


Introduction
Social media has became the most popular tool which helps to society for communication and it embraces the world in a short span of life. It has affected users' attitudes to advertising and to similar marketing efforts. The occurrence of Facebook with alternative social media websites have started analyse for discovering the consumers' attitudes to Facebook advertising.
In the past years, there were slightly major figure of theories which have been applied to the investigation for to see the response towards to adverts with a variety of media substance. Some theoretical methods were explained in content as mentioned in research aim part of the study.

Research Purpose
The necessity of the study about advertisements which are shared on Facebook is obvious; particularly the reason is the clients' knowledge about social media websites is not lightly convenient to people who make adverts. There should be other empirical kind of research which is required to calm the investors' or analysts' concerns that are seeing Facebook as a convenient environment for advertising with enormous potential of marketing.

Hypotheses
The attitude toward advertisements, communication instrument content and advertisement admittance and media practice, users' experiments on social network sites have been explained in this study. In the antecedent studies, the same research used original survey data to examine individuals' social networking site experience which was specifically aimed on Facebook and their attitude toward advertisements. Individual engagement is inherently motivated and nearly associated to personal qualifications meantime social interactive engagement is quintessentially and also exteriorly motivated with the worth obtained from social congruity of the practice.
This research was to discover the association between individuals' emotional connectedness to Facebook and their attitude toward advertisements on Facebook.
In the previous research, the actual study recommended that there is a positive association between individuals' emotional connectedness to Facebook and their attitude toward Facebook advertisements. The gender difference in Facebook experience was also of the interest of the current study. It was demonstrated that men and women have a different motivations and resulting attitudes and behaviours for Internet use in the previous research (Schlosser et al., 2009;Weiser, 2000;Wolin and Korgaonkar, 2003). Accordingly, the current study presented two research hypotheses concerning individuals' emotional connectedness to Facebook and their attitude toward Facebook advertising: H1: Emotional connectedness to Facebook advertising is associated with attitudes towards Facebook advertising H2: Emotional connectedness of females to Facebook is more associated with attitudes towards Facebook advertising than males

The Problem Statement
This study aims to find out the emotional connectedness to Facebook and the users' attitudes towards Facebook advertising are associated to each other or not. It further seeks to see if gender differences made any difference in moderating the individuals' emotional connectedness to Facebook as males and females and their attitudes towards Facebook advertising.
The following research questions were also put forward as a subset of the main problem statement: 1.2.1. How is the concept of "emotional connectedness to Facebook" described in the literature?
1.2.2. How is the concept of "attitudes towards Facebook advertising" described in the literature?
1.2.3. Are the two concepts of "emotional connectedness to Facebook" and "attitudes towards Facebook advertising" are associated with each other?
1.2.4. Does the level of "emotional connectedness to Facebook" of users affect the level of their "attitudes towards Facebook advertising"?
1.2.5. Does the level of "emotional connectedness to Facebook" of female users affect the level of their "attitudes towards Facebook advertising" more than males?

Methodology
Aim of this research is to observe and analyze the approach of individuals towards the emotional connectedness to Facebook and their attitudes towards Facebook advertising by performing a survey typed field study with specified descriptive variables. University students are targetted to be the main unit of analysis to observe the emotional effects of Facebook advertising on random individuals. As mentioned by Fink (2003), survey system can be described as analysing and reporting the results gathered by collecting data from a reliable tool, which needs to be pre-designed and well administred. Series of questions, which are composed from Litrature review, are targetted to the audiance whom are at their natural habitat.

Findings
A simple random sampling method was adopted as an aim of that research. A total of 212 questionnaire forms were distributed to 212 different students within the premises of the faculty between April 2016 and May 2016. There were two (2) questionnaire forms screened out because they were students with no Facebook accounts. The total numbers of questionnaires realized were two hundred (200). Questionnaires not returned 0

Total questionnaires realized 210
The data collected on the questionnaire forms were transferred to Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 21) software program and then analysed.

Consistency of the measuring instrument
Cronbach's (alpha) as coefficient of internal consistency was used to estimate the reliability of the questionnaires' responses.  The Cronbach's coefficient alpha of the 8 items for the attitudes towards Facebook questionnaire was 0.841, and for the 8 items measuring the emotional connectedness to Facebook was 0.762. Both suggest that the items had optimal reliability and relatively high internal consistency. This is the most popular test for consistency reliability and a coefficient above 0.60 is sufficient for most social science studies (Sekaran and Bougie 2009).

Demographic analysis of the respondents
Section I of the questionnaire comprised the information of the researcher, place and time of research, brief explanation on the study, the screening question in order to make sure only students with Facebook accounts completed the forms, the section also asked the gender of the respondents. The results are stated below:

Gender
Out of 212 valid respondents, a total of 85 were male which represents 40.1% while 127 were female which represents 59.9% as depicted in Table 5.4 below; Major finding: Majority of the respondents were female.

Attitudes towards Facebook advertising
Section II of the questionnaire contained 8 attitude statements that were diligently formulated and distributed to 212 students of the Faculty, out of which 210 were regarded as valid. The section comprised attitude statements towards Facebook advertising was adapted from Xhang (2005). The following depicted the average responses; The average response to the statement attitudes on Attitudes to Facebook Advertising was 3.1952, which indicated that on average respondents showed only a slightly positive attitude towards Facebook advertising. Respondents mostly said that they did not fully ignored advertising on Facebook (3.6143 -reverse logic). Respondents also slightly agreed that advertisements are necessary to fund Facebook (3.6619). Finally, respondents slightly agreed that advertisements did not make them less likely to use Facebook (3.5000). Major finding: Respondents do not necessarily ignore Facebook advertising and find Facebook advertising somehow necessary for funding Facebook activities.

Attitudes towards Facebook emotional connectedness
Section III of the questionnaire contained 6 attitude statements that were diligently formulated and distributed to 212 students of the Faculty, out of which 210 were regarded as valid. The section comprised attitude statements towards Facebook advertising was adapted from Facebook intensity scale (FBI) developed by Ellison at al (2007). The following depicted the average responses; Valid N (listwise) 210 3.5494 The average response to the statement attitudes on emotional connectedness to Facebook was 3.5494, which indicated that respondents slightly agreed on their emotional connectedness towards Facebook. However, respondents disagreed on telling other people that they are proud to be on Facebook.
Major finding: On average respondents are emotionally connected to Facebook. They all strongly agree that Facebook is part of their daily activity. However, they disagree to tell others that they are proud to use Facebook.

The analysis of the proposed model of the study
This study aimed to examine two hypotheses designed regarding the relationship between the independent variable of Emotional connectedness and the dependent variable of attitudes to Facebook advertising. It also aimed to examine the gender of the respondents as a moderating variable between the independent and the dependent variable. Correlation and linear regression analysis were adopted for examine to see what are the association of the variables with each other.
In order to validate the hypotheses, a correlation and a linear regression analysis have used to reveal which of the independent variables account for the variance in the dependent variable and the effect of the moderating variable between the independent and the dependent variables.
The analysis of the proposed model has been tested by using the correlation and line regression analysis on the SPSS version 21 software.

Correlations between Emotional connectedness to Facebook (avg_econn)
and to attitudes to Facebook advertising (avg_att) The output of the 2-tailed bivariate Pearson Correlation test above yielded a correlation of 0.288, which indicates a somehow moderate correlation between the respondents' emotional connectedness to Facebook and their attitudes towards Facebook Advertising.
Major finding: There is a moderate association between respondents' emotional connectedness to Facebook and their attitudes towards Facebook advertising.

Emotional connectedness to Facebook
Attitudes towards Facebook Advertising 0.288

Gender Correlations Correlations between Emotional connectedness to
Facebook (avg_econn) and to attitudes to Facebook advertising (avg_att) according to gender connectedness to Facebook and their attitudes to Facebook Advertising. The male rersondents' correlation of the same relationship indicated a week correlation at 0.092.
Major finding: Emotional connectedness of female respondents' to Facebook is more strongly associated towards attitudes on Facebook advertising than male respondents'.

Regression Analysis
A simple linear regression analysis was implemented to determine the relationship level between the independent variables, emotional connectiveness to Facebook and the dependent variable, attitudes towards Facebook advertising. The same degree of association was also tested by moderating the independent variable with gender; male and female.

Model
Sum of Squares

Df
Mean Square F Sig. The Anova table above indicates that the model predicts the data well. Significance is 0.000 which is less than 0.05 indicating that the overall regression model, statistically and significantly predicts the outcome variable. In other words, the average emotional connectedness of the respondents to Facebook predicts their attitudes towards Facebook advertising.
Major finding: The average emotional connectedness of the respondents to Facebook predicts their attitudes towards Facebook advertising. It appears from the ANOVA table that Female emotional connectedness towards Facebook at 0.000 which is less than 0.05, statistically and significantly predicts the outcome of the attitudes toward Facebook advertising. There is no statistical significance in the case of the male respondents.

2. between Emotional connectedness to Facebook (avg_econn) and to attitudes to Facebook advertising (avg_att) acoording to gender
Major finding: The female respondents' emotional connectedness to Facebook is more associated and predictive towards attitudes to Facebook advertising than the male respondents' emotional connectedness to Facebook.

Conclusion
This study provides an empirical research for measuring the relationship between the emotional connectedness to Facebook and the users' attitudes towards Facebook advertising. Gender differences were used to moderate the users' emotional connectedness to Facebook as males and females. Also, this study includes theoretical research for dependent variable (attitudes towards Facebook Advertising), independent variable (emotional connectedness to Facebook) and moderating variable (gender). The results show that female Facebook users are more attracted by the advertisements and willing to share them but the male users do not tend to share or read the facebook advertisements as much as females. According to the past research, women's motivation is adapted differently such as entertainment is one of the factor that they look for and also information which they gain by advertising on Facebook has a stronger impact on their attitudes towards advertising than men. Therefore, the main target audiences should be males for the marketers. We can conclude that it is necessary to specify different marketing strategies on female and male users on a different approaches.

Limitation
Main target audiences of this research is limited to the size of the data. Survey needs to be aimed for a larger scale of attendants with variety of occupation options, locale and age range in order to summarize the findings as a broad statement. To sum up, the findings can not be generalized.

Recommendations for future research
In this research, the results has conducted from only Economics and Administrative Sciences Faculty of the University. As a recommendation, other faculty students and/or advanced to the nationwide Universities can be used to claim more accurate results.
Also attendant sampling can be improved by increasing the focus area of the research to be performed on enlarged localization with different job sectors, age ratio, culture and income rates. Thus, emotional connectedness and the attitudes towards Facebook advertising can be explored on the results which include a different demographic variables.

Suggestions
The area of interest for the male users can be analysed by their videos and links that they shared on social media websites. After that, these factors can be targeted according to their social behaviour rather than concentrating on a specific promotional strategies or discounts of the products on advertisements. It can be also concentrated on enjoyement fact shares and advertisements which links to the marketing goals. It should not be underestimated that any shared content by the male users on a specific area will also boost other users to trigger share rates.
The Promotional campaigns could be used to attract people for economical reasons. This approach can be maintained by including quote codes such as "Question of the day" , which will attract the male users and they will click on the advertisement / promotion and comment, thus it enables to gain more audiences for the market.
Another approach would be remarketing strategy. Firstly, analysing male users' behaviour to see If any website attracting them and this can be advertised on facebook, which has a potential to be shared among male users. This website will boost the remarketing strategy for the company and it will bring the user back to the facebook page or the website of the company.