Authors : Ji Hye Lee and Yeob Yu
Abstract: The central purpose of the current study is to identify the factors affecting Chinese netizen’s intent to use WeChat, the leading SNS channel in China and to see whether empathy would have a mediating effect on their use intent. For that purpose, a set of influential factors were extracted from an analysis of previous researches and a preliminary test was performed to secure the validity of these factors. As far as the data under analysis is concerned, a survey was conducted to a group of Chinese users of WeChat. The collected data was analyzed by using SPSS/PC+Windows 20.0. Also, the correlation among the factors in turn was examined by performing a covariance structure analysis through AMOS 21.0. It was found that the their use efficacy had a significant effect on empathy and use intent their interactivity also had a significant impact on empathy and use intent. Their inter relationship had a significant effect on empathy but not on use intent their empathy had a significant effect on use intent no mediating effect of empathy was found between use efficacy and interactivity and finally empathy did exert a mediating effect on the relationship between interrelationship and use intent. Such results are expected to be used as a base data for any effort to design strategies to increase the number of users and also to improve the user’s use intent.
Ji Hye Lee and Yeob Yu, 2017. The Cause-and-Effect Relationship among the Factors of WeChat Use Intent: With a Focus on the Mediating Effect of Empathy. Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 12: 8117-8126.