Increasing individuals' involvement and WOM intention on Social Networking Sites: Content matters!

Applying Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), we investigated the effects of content type (utilitarian vs. hedonic) on individuals' involvement and intention to subscribe/promote a company's SNS. An experiment was conducted with 171 participants. We found that utilitarian content worked better for highly involved individuals than hedonic content, but hedonic content increased individuals' situational involvement with a company's SNS more than utilitarian content among low-involved people. Both situational and enduring involvements influenced intention to subscribe to and continuously promote the company's SNS. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed further.