Toward an understanding of the behavioral intention to use a social networking site: An extension of task-technology fit to social-technology fit

• The TTF model has its limitation in explaining social networking site (SNS) usage.
• We propose a social/task-technology model to explain the intention to use SNS.
• Social characteristics play a dominant role in evaluating the impact on SNS usage.
• When users consider SNS is useful, they perceived SNS is fit for their social needs.

Social networking sites (SNS) are one of the recent popular social media platforms. Successful SNS can attract millions of users in a few years, which has drawn much attention in the study of SNS. Understanding the relationships between a user’s intention and the utilization of SNS is an essential step in engaging the SNS as a marketing or educational tool. However, current research models for technology acceptance can hardly explain the impact on the intention of using SNS from the perspective of technology fit due to the lack of social constructs. This study examines and compares the impact of task, social, and technology characteristics on users’ intentions in using SNS by integrating the task-technology fit model and social capital theory. Data of 315 Facebook users were collected from the online questionnaire, and processed using the SmartPLS version 2.0 for path analysis and hypotheses tests. The results reveal that the social-technology fit has a dominant impact over the tasktechnology fit on users’ intentions to employ SNS. For SNS research, it suggests a reconceptualization of the current task-technology fit model by adding social constructs if necessary.