A Study of Factors Affecting Social Network Used in Thailand

Social Network Service (SNS) is popular in Thailand now [25]. Many people have at least one account with Facebook, Twitter or others. People use social network for many reasons such as finding old friends, advertisement. This means that social network is used for both personal and business purposes. Even many people in Thailand use social network services, some of them still don’t use any social network services provided. It is interesting to study the factors that affect the use of social network in Thailand, since the characteristics of Thai people are difference from other countries. Technology Acceptance Model is used to examine the effect of characteristics of Thai people on actual use of social networks. The characteristics of Thai people are considered based on Maslow’s hierarchical Theory of Motivation in 3 concepts which are belongingness and love needs, esteem needs and self-actualization needs. Some researchers found that encouragement has been an effect on good performance. It supports to be a good support of real usage of social network, so it is worth to consider the effect of encouragement on actual usage of social network services. The questionnaires were sent out to collect data from residence of Bangkok and vicinity. As the result, all three needs have effect on perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and perceived encouragement. Both perceived ease of use and perceived encouragement have effect on perceived usefulness. Finally, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and perceived encouragement have effect on actual usage.