An Exploratory Study on Factors Affecting the Intention to Block Friends on Mobile Messengers

February 28, 2023  |  Vol.9, No.2  |  PP. 179-192  | PDF

AUTHORS:

Myung-Seong Yim, Dept. of Business Administration, Sahmyook University, Korea

KEYWORDS:

Intention to Block, Lack of Social Skills, Loneliness, Privacy Concerns, Communication

Abstract

The ultimate aim of this study is to explore factors affecting the intention to block friends on mobile messengers. To archieve this purpose, we suggest the proposed model consisting of privacy concerns, lack of social skills, loneliness, and messenger usefulness affecting intention to block messenger friends. To test hypotheses, 140 data were used to identify relationships among latent variables mentioned above. For the empirical analysis, a generalized structured component analysis (GSCA) under variance-based structural equation modeling (VB-SEM) was used. We found that privacy concerns and loneliness have a statistically significant effect on the intention to block mobile messenger friends. On the other hand, lack of social skills and messenger usefulness do not have a significant influence on intention to block friends. However, the lack of social skills has a statistically significant effect on loneliness. This result manifests that users with high privacy concerns are possible to block unintimate mobile messenger friends. In addition, it can be shown that people who feel a lot of loneliness are more likely to block friends. This result shows that mobile users who feel more lonely want to focus on the quality of a social relationship rather than the quantity of it.

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Citations:

APA:
Yim, M. S. (2023). An Exploratory Study on Factors Affecting the Intention to Block Friends on Mobile Messengers. Asia-pacific Journal of Convergent Research Interchange (APJCRI), ISSN: 2508-9080 (Print); 2671-5325 (Online), KCTRS, 9(2), 179-192. doi: 10.47116/apjcri.2023.02.14

MLA:
Yim, Myung-Seong, “An Exploratory Study on Factors Affecting the Intention to Block Friends on Mobile Messengers.” Asia-pacific Journal of Convergent Research Interchange, ISSN: 2508-9080 (Print); 2671-5325 (Online), KCTRS, vol. 9, no. 2, 2023, pp. 179-192. APJCRI, http://fucos.or.kr/journal/APJCRI/Articles/v9n2/14.html.

IEEE:
[1] M. S. Yim, “An Exploratory Study on Factors Affecting the Intention to Block Friends on Mobile Messengers.” Asia-pacific Journal of Convergent Research Interchange (APJCRI), ISSN: 2508-9080 (Print); 2671-5325 (Online), KCTRS, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 179-192, February 2023.