Satisfaction with Social Networking Sites: Effect of Playfulness and Change in Use

The tremendous growth experienced by social networking sites (SNSs) has introduced a multitude of social phenomena into the study of these online information systems (IS). Such explosive growth can create an evolution in a site’s original intended use, giving rise to issues that both enhance and plague the users as well as the developers of such sites. With stories in the news of employees fired or students punished or dismissed outright from their schools’ programs, this study introduces a new construct, change in intended use (CIU), to determine possible effects on satisfaction. Using the framework of the expectation-confirmation theory (ECT), this study also incorporates perceived playfulness into the model as a predictor of satisfaction to further the research in understanding satisfaction with a SNS. The survey results indicate that a change in intended use does have a significant negative effect on satisfaction with the SNS.