Testing alternative models of individuals’ social media involvement and satisfaction

•Introduces social media involvement and social media satisfaction to TAM 3.•Provides insights into the underpinning of the process of social media usage.•Determines that involvement and satisfaction are dual mediators on usage intention.•Social media satisfaction shows a significant effect on usage intention.•The strength of the path coefficients in the model varies by the country data set.

This study extends the Technology Acceptance Model 3 (TAM 3) within the context of the rapidly evolving area of social media. Since social media requires the user’s active participation and processing of information as well as the creation of user-generated content, this timely study introduces the two relevant constructs of social media involvement and social media satisfaction that are associated with TAM 3. This study then develops three alternative conceptual models and empirically validates each of them using datasets obtained from the United States and Saudi Arabia. The LISREL analysis results show that the Dual Mediation Impact model is the best-fit model for both datasets. Further, the results show that a user’s social media involvement and social media satisfaction are dual mediators of the TAM 3 factors on social media usage intention. While the two country data show some differences in the strength of the relationships in the Dual Mediation Impact model, the identified model provides a common framework for global use. Implications and future research directions are discussed.