Using the Theory of Planned Behavior to Determine the Social Network Usage Behavior in Saudi Arabia

This study examines the participation intention(s) and behavior of individuals on Social Networking Sites (SNSs), utilizing the theory of planned behavior. The data collected from a survey of 1100 participants, is distilled to 657 usable sets and further analyzed to assess the predictive power of TPB model via structural equation modelling. The results show that the attitude and subjective norm have a significant effect on the participation intention of adopters. Further, the results depict that participation intention have a significant effect on participation behavior. On the other hand, the study reveals that perceived behavioral control has no significant effect on participation intention or behavior of adopters. The model adopted in this study explains 52% of the variance in “Participation Intentions” and 38% of the variance in “Participation Behavior”. Participation of behavioral intention in the model’s explanatory power was the highest amongst the constructs (able to explain 20% of usage behavior). On the other hand, attitude was able to explain around 12% of the usage behavior on SNSs.