The Mediating Effect of Bridging Social Capital Between Social Media Usage and Affective Attitude

Abstract

In this work, the authors develop and test a theoretical model that investigates the mediating effect of bridging social capital between usage of a brand specific social network site and consumer attitude towards the brand. Specifically, they see how usage of online social network sites drives consumer purchase intent, using university football as a domain to test the model. They find that bridging social capital is indeed a mediating construct between the university's sports social networking site usage and affective attitude towards the team brand. As social network site usage increases, both injunctive norms (perceptions about the expectations of referent others) and descriptive norms (perceptions of the actual behavior of referent others) increase. They show that these influence emotional reward, in the form of increased bridging social capital, which in turn influences affective attitude towards the brand. The findings contribute to understanding how consumer tribes form on online forums and how subjective norms influence affective consumer attitude.