Information technology affordances in online social commerce: conceptual development and empirical examination

Abstract

Information technology (IT) affordances have garnered widespread interest in online retailing and consumer services literature for theoretically interpreting social media-associated behaviors and for conceptualizing human–computer interaction in IT-integrated environments. However, empirical studies on this phenomenon, especially in the context of online social commerce (OSC), remain limited. This stems partly from the absence of a clear conceptualization of IT affordances and a validated measurement scale within the OSC context. Our study addresses these gaps by conceptualizing IT affordances in OSC and identifying six dimensions of this phenomenon: visibility, metavoicing, social connecting, triggered attending, guidance shopping, and trading. We develop a conceptual model and investigate the relationships between IT affordances and associated user behavior, specifically OSC purchase intention and OSC sharing intention. We further develop and validate a rigorous 26-item scale for IT affordances in OSC through qualitative and quantitative methods. Using data from three rounds of surveys and analyzing them with structural equation modeling, our findings confirm that IT affordances in OSC are strong predictors of OSC purchase and sharing intentions. Our study contributes to online retailing and consumer services research by developing a validated measurement scale for IT affordances in OSC, thereby enabling more precise, context-specific investigations of the role of IT affordances in shaping online retailing and consumer behavior.