UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Nguyen Thi Thu Hang ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKING: A STUDY OF FACEBOOK USERS IN VIETNAM MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) Ho Chi Minh City – 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Nguyen Thi Thu Hang ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKING: A STUDY OF FACEBOOK USERS IN VIETNAM ID: 22130020 MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) SUPERVISOR: Associate Prof. NGUYEN THI MAI TRANG Ho Chi Minh City – 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis could not be accomplished without the help, advise, support, guidance, and encouragement of many people. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor – Associate Professor, Doctor Nguyen Thi Mai Trang. She gave me clear and careful direction, guidance and correction to my research.
Especially, I highly appreciate her enthusiasm help and support. Secondly, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Associate Professor, Doctor Nguyen Dinh Tho, Associate Professor, Doctor Tran Ha Minh Quan and Doctor Nguyen Thi Nguyet Que for their valuable time as the members of the proposal examination committee. Their comments and meaningful suggestions were significantly contributed to my completion of this research. Next, I would like to thank my dear family, colleagues, friends, and classmates for their valuable advice and support during the time I was doing my research.
Last but not least, I would like to express my great thanks to ISB for their support during the time I was studying and doing my proposal. It is a big encouragement for me to overcome all obstacles facing during my Master course. With sincere thanks. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ii ABSTRACT Social networking sites including Facebook have become a freely instrumental for people to enter and keep in touch with what they are concerned.
Until now, Facebook has quickly grow and become one of the most popular online social networking site for adolescence, especially university students. Online social networking use in Vietnam is growing rapidly and occupying approximately 45.2% of population in 2015 according to Kemp (2015). In other countries, there are some evidences show that social networking use can affect university students’ academic performance. Then, the lower academic performance the students get, the lower their satisfaction.
In Vietnam, there are also some articles mentioned these relationships. As a result, this study would like to mention following factors: social trust, social self- efficacy and social capital that leads to Facebook use and its influence on university students’ academic performance, life satisfaction. The data is collected by online, email survey and delivered questionnaires directly to respondents from over seven universities in Ho Chi Minh City. Some research analysis were used to test the relationship among factors with expectation of strengthen evidence in Ho Chi Minh City and also in Vietnam.
The study’s results show that social trust and social self- efficacy have positive influence on social capital. Social capital also has positive influence on stickiness. Then, stickiness has negative impact on academic performance. Finally, it makes the level of life satisfaction becomes lower.
This study also points out practical implications which support educators in educating and helping their students in life. Then, this study points out some implication for managers and marketers for purpose of using Facebook as a channel of communication. In addition, this study also points out some new future researches relating to this study which should be seriously concerned. Key words: Facebook, online social networking site, students, academic performance, life satisfaction LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ABSTRACT TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS LIST OF TABLES LIST OF FIGURES LIST OF APPENDIXES CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.
Background of the study. Scope of the study. Significance of the study. Structure of the thesis.
7 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. Social self-efficacy. The relationship among variables. Academic performance and life satisfaction.
Stickiness and academic performance. Social capital and stickiness. Social trust and social capital. Social self-efficacy and social capital.
Conscientiousness and its moderator effect. 19 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY. Data collection and procedure. Measurement of constructs.
In-depth interview. Convergent and discriminant validity. Confirmatory factor analysis. Structural equation model.
The analysis to test the moderating effect. 31 CHAPTER 4: RESULT AND DISCUSSION. Data statistical analysis. Cronbach’s alpha reliability test.
Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The saturated model. The structural model. The analysis to test the moderating effect of conscientiousness.
47 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION. 50 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Academic performance and conscientiousness. Limitations of the study and future research.
61 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AMOSS Analysis of Moment Structures AP Academic Performance AVE Average Variance Extracted C Conscientiousness CMIN/DF Chi-square with degree of freedom CFA Confirmatory Factor Analysis CFI Comparative Fit Index EFA Exploratory Factor Analysis GFI Goodness of Fix Index GPA Grade Point Average H Hypothesis LS Life satisfaction RMSEA Root Mean Squared Error Approximation SC Social Capital SE Social Self-efficacy SEM Structural Equation Model ST Social Trust Stick Stickiness SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Sciences TLI Tucker & Lewis Coefficient Index VNU Vietnam National University LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vii LIST OF TABLES Table 3. Social trust construct. Social self-efficacy construct. Bonding social capital construct.
Bridging social capital construct. Life satisfaction construct. Demographic information of respondents. Cronbach’s Alpha results.
Measurement correlations, composite reliability and AVE. Result of hypothesis testing. 42 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2. The Research Model.
CFA for Social capital. The saturated model before deleting LS3. The saturated model without LS3 (Standardized estimate). The structural model result (Standardized estimate).
40 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com viii LIST OF APPENDIXES Appendix 1: List of in-depth interview’s participants. 61 Appendix 2: In-depth interview’s refinement measurement scale. 61 Appendix 3: Vietnamese questionnaire. 64 Appendix 4: English questionnaire.
67 Appendix 5: Table of items’ Skewness and Kurtosis. 70 Appendix 6: CFA Regression Weights. 71 Appendix 7: SEM Regression Weights. 72 Appendix 8: Table for Conscientiousness Median Statistics.
74 Appendix 9: Results of multi-groups analysis for moderator. 75 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Background of the study Facebook has become a global phenomenon and it is one of the greatest importance means of communication and an essential part of almost every university students’ daily life (Zaremohzzabieh, Samah, Omar, Bolong & Kamarudin, 2014). For most adolescents including university students, internet communications seem to be a regular as well as an importance work in life (Liu, Yin & Huang, 2013).
Nowadays, it has become a good way to keep in touch with one’s family and friends especially when they are living far from their family. Facebook was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, who was a Harvard University undergraduate. Today, more than 68.5% of young adults and teenagers use Facebook on a regular basis (Kuss & Griffiths, 2011). People use instant messaging and live chat to keep in touch with relatives and friends.
According Mattiola (2014) examination of the negative and positive qualities of Facebook, Facebook is an excellent environment to stay connected. Mattiola also shows that people use status updates, photos, and profile information to keep their friends and their family informed. As a result, Facebook can keep you up to date on the happenings of all of our close ones. In addition, Facebook has a large number of users including university students and they are spending a large amount of their time on Facebook.
According to Etim and Huynh (2015), there is about 900 million monthly visitor occupying 22% of the Facebook quarter two of 2014 (Kemp, 2015). A large number of students are benefiting from using Facebook by exchanging information for educational goals, making friends, and other activities on Facebook site. The previous studies indicate that Facebook site can become addictive to some users who are students. Consequently, Facebook addiction becomes an education matter (Zaremohzzabieh et al.
Recently, Facebook has reached the top 15 most popular social networking sites globally in 2015. This number presents an evidence that Facebook now has a rival impact on people around the world especially young user group. In the United State of America, a recent survey of 3000 students from across the country shows that approximately 90% of college students are Facebook users and 37% of them are Twitter users (Dahlstrom, Boor, Grunwald & Vockley, 2011). LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 Facebook users spend most of their time for the communicating environment, engaging in interactive activities while some heavy users are seemed to be addicted (Zaremohzzabieh et al.
In Vietnam, Web 2.0 tools such as Facebook, Skype, Zing me or other social media tools have emerged as the choice of technologies. In addition, Vietnamese internet users is now approximately 41 million users occupying 45.2% of the population (Kemp, 2015). As a result, there is a greater need to recognize the importance role of social networking sites as a means to supporting communication and collaborative working. Indeed, the services are providing the most comfortable for the users.
Among the services, Facebook represents a good communication channel that cannot be easily ignored. It is said that Vietnamese students are now using a large amount of their time on Facebook. According to a recent report in November, 2014 of QandMe – a Vietnam market research agency, approximately 47% Vietnamese Facebook users are over 18 year old who spend about 3 hours/day for Facebook (QandMe, 2014). In addition, the estimated numbered of Facebook users in Vietnam who are students is about 660.000 at the end of the second quarter in 2014.
This information raises a question of whether using too much Facebook will have an impact on students Facebook users or not. Vietnamese prefer to online social networking sites, especially Facebook. As mentioned in Huong (2010), “Some Vietnamese users would prefer living in a Vietnamese online society. It's somewhat like you're entering your home, not a foreign one".
There are studies which mentioned the influence of bonding capital and bridging capital on individuals’ social networking development. According to Henttonen, Johanson and Janhonen (2014), online social networking sites such as Facebook can both enhance people’s bonding and bridging capital development and also their team performance. While the adolescent in Vietnam are using Facebook as a communication tool to connect with friends, family and making new friends from outside the country (Dao Le Hoa An, 2013). Using like or comment function on Facebook will help people feel connected most of the time (No name, 2013).
The mentioned above raises issues that the bonding and LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 3 bridging social capital have important impact on the motivation of using social networking sites, especially Facebook in Vietnam. However, in some other countries, beside the positive impact of using social networking sites, there are many studies on the influence of using social media or Facebook on the academic performance (Glass, Li & Pan, 2014). According to Kabre and Brown (2011), there is no clear correlation between times spending on using Facebook with the academic performance. Recent reviews show an over-participation or students addiction to online social networking may have a negative impact on their academic performance (Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010).
Furthermore, another research of Vivian, Barnes, Geer, and Wood (2014) indicates that some students are leaving traces of their academic journey in online environments as Facebook. In addition, according to Junco and Reynol (2012), the time spending on Facebook and checking Facebook is negatively related to the overall Grade Point Average (GPA).