Using focus group to investigate why people use facebook: The case of Taiwan

• Published in: 2011 Proceedings of PICMET '11: Technology Management in the Energy Smart World (PICMET) pp. 1 - 6
• Main Authors: Shih-Chi Chang, Pei-Hsi Liu
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.07.2011
• Subjects: Bismuth; Communities; Facebook; Humans; Indexes; Internet; Privacy
• ISBN: 9781457715525; 145771552X
• ISSN: 2159-5100

Facebook is a very popular virtual community in the world. When the Chinese version released in Taiwan in 2008, something interesting happened. People are not only interested with its powerful function on social network connectivity but its online games such as happy farm. Due to its rapid growth in Taiwan, many enterprises also tried to cooperate with facebook to market their products or services. However, few studies are conducted understand the users motivation to enjoy in this virtual community. To propose a framework to explain why people use facebook, four focus groups were conducted, each with 6 participants. We found that effort expectancy, performance expectancy, perceived playfulness, social influence, perceived critical mass, human-message interaction, human-human interaction, information sharing, right of privacy protection, search function, free to use, and habit are factors influencing behavioral intention to use facebook.