Understanding online social support and its antecedents: A socio-cognitive model

Abstract

Little attention has been paid in previous literature to understanding the factors that drive online social support from a perspective of social psychology. This study validates a research model that examines the above issue. In the setting of information technology, this study postulates self-efficacy and online support expectancy as the key drivers of information technology usage, whereas information technology usage and referent network size jointly influence online social support. This study contributes to the social science literature by extending information technology usage models to the area of rarely explored online social support and by presenting an operationalization of referent network size in the area. (C) 2009 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.