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Social Overload and Discontinuance Intention on Facebook: A Comparative Study

Sustainability 2021, 13(22), 12556; https://doi.org/10.3390/su132212556

by Chaeyoung Lim¹

and Jongchang Ahn^2,*

Reviewer 1:

ATUL SHIVA

Reviewer 2: Anonymous

Reviewer 3: Anonymous

Sustainability 2021, 13(22), 12556; https://doi.org/10.3390/su132212556

Submission received: 9 October 2021 / Revised: 10 November 2021 / Accepted: 10 November 2021 / Published: 13 November 2021

(This article belongs to the Section Sustainable Management)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Author(s)

Many thanks for submitting your manuscript to Sustainability (MDPI Publishers). There is a novelty in the idea, however, in my opinion there are many areas of improvement. I have identified the area of improvement in two aspects:

Conceptualization of idea and formulation of hypotheses.
Statistical operations in the manuscript. Since I have been trained from TUHH, Germany under the guidance of Professor Christian M Ringle, Professor Becker and Professor Marko Sarstedt, thus you can understand that application of PLS SEM in SmartPLS would require good approach to proceed ahead.

Abstract

Please specify the main purpose of conducting the study in first line of abstract. In Line 14, you must mention the use of PLS SEM on your survey using questionnaire method. In Line 17-18, you main focus should be on providing major findings of your study instead of suggestions. In line19-20, you must mention the novelty of the idea conceptualized in the manuscript. Last lines of abstract to state contribution to the domain of marketing with your manuscript.

Introduction

The major issue identified was that the authors have mentioned the line without appropriate citations, data & statistics and recent citations of 2020 and 2021. Line 27 must provide citation to justify the need of SNS mentioned. In Line 30-31, mention a citation which states your claim of socially engagement of people. In Line 32-33, provide the name of agency or data to support the argument of decline in SNS recently. Line 36-37 should be supported by some recent citation of 2021 to justify the claim. Line 40 to be justified with citation. Line 41, should cite 2 to 3 studies as the authors started the line with THOSE studies. I mean which studies……. Paid less attention to other potential factors. Line50-52 claims difficulties, thus authors must cite which studies gave you direction to quote these lines of argument.

In Line 61-63, the authors came directly on to the importance of conducting the study in Korean and Japanese context. The authors must provide research gap as to why these two nations are of interest in the manuscript. Why not China or India which are highest consumers of SNS? It is that authors believed that Korea and Japan is correct, however, they must provide the need and urgency to focus on to these two selected nations. In line 66-67, provide some data or statistics to support largest number of SNS users. Further, why only Facebook has been identified in the present study when Twitter and other SNS are also popular among users.

Most important, when the authors knew that they are heading for a Structural Equation Model, then they must have interwoven the meaning and need of Reactance Theory in the Introduction. Before proposing the two research questions, there should be comprehensive mention of research gaps in terms of two nation selected, theoretical perspective, and Social media platform selected. Further, I strongly recommend the authors to cite research papers of 2019-2020 and 2021 (preferably scopus and web of science indexed journals) in the Introduction section.

Literature Review

The authors must provide first paragraph as Theoretical Framework to mention the Reactance Theory in the manuscript as the foundation stone must be perfectly explained. I am recommending some papers of 2021 to support the use and application of Reactance Theory in the manuscript.

Reactance Theory (Scopus Indexed papers)

Septianto, F., & Kemper, J. A. (2021). The effects of age cues on preferences for organic food: The moderating role of message claim. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 62, 102641.

Omar, N. A., Nazri, M. A., Ali, M. H., & Alam, S. S. (2021). The panic buying behavior of consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic: Examining the influences of uncertainty, perceptions of severity, perceptions of scarcity, and anxiety. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 62, 102600.

Ding, A., Legendre, T. S., Han, J. R., & Chang, H. S. (2021). Freedom restriction and non-member customers’ response to loyalty programs. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 94, 102809.

Amarnath, D. D., & Jaidev, U. P. (2021). Toward an integrated model of consumer reactance: a literature analysis. Management Review Quarterly, 71(1), 41-90.

Melnyk, V., Carrillat, F. A., & Melnyk, V. (2021). EXPRESS: The Influence of Social Norms on Consumer Behavior: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Marketing, 00222429211029199.

Hu, X., & Wise, K. (2021). How playable ads influence consumer attitude: exploring the mediation effects of perceived control and freedom threat. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing.

Further, the authors should try to reduce the length of para 2.1 to 2.4. Focus only to mention and define the concepts used in the study. Need and importance can be justified in Introduction section.

Research Model Development

This is the most painful section, the authors have written. The model on the face value is correctly mentioned in Figure 1, however the hypotheses formulation is poor. The first hypotheses where Facebook Interaction and Social Overloads was to be framed lacks the basic idea to give input for the prospective reader to generate interest. Statistically, when Interaction moderation is the main idea of ‘Existence of persona non grata’ and ‘Facebook interaction’ then the first argument should be provide justification with citations. Then interaction moderation and its need to be specified.

Instead hypotheses are not correctly mentioned.

H1: Facebook interaction positively leads to social overloads.

H7: The interaction effect of FB interaction and persona non grata leads to social overloads.

In para 3.2, only 1 citation for the entire hypotheses in not good for the manuscript. At least 5-7 recent studies should have been there to hold the claim of authors. Same is with the H3 and H4. How authors can lead their argument, if the hypotheses from H5 and H9 are written on the basis of simple assumption that studies 2,4,6 and 9 are enough for readers to understand. As a reader, I would like to read each and every paragraph to come to the said hypotheses.

Methods

The authors are advised to mention the type of research design in para 4.1. In my opinion, this is a case of descriptive research design.

Secondly, the sampling technique used in the paper is missing. Which sampling technique was out of probability or non – probability? Please mention the type of sampling technique used in the study.

The authors also need to mention the sample size requirements. How 433 responses are enough for the study. I suggest you to kindly go through G*Power software for determining minimum sample size requirements. The citation for the same is:

Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Buchner, A., & Lang, A. G. (2009). Statistical power analyses using G* Power 3.1: Tests for correlation and regression analyses. Behavior research methods, 41(4), 1149-1160.

Next, have the authors given due justification of PLS – SEM instead of Covariance based SEM. There is urgent need to mention the same with citations. The appropriate citations are as under:

Cepeda-Carri´on, G., Henseler, J., Ringle, C.M., Rold´an, J.L., 2016. Prediction-oriented modeling in business research by means of PLS path modeling. J. Bus. Res. 69 (10), 4545–4551. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.03.048

Cepeda-Carri´on, G., Nitzl, C., Rold´an, J.L., 2017. Mediation analyses in partial least squares structural equation modeling: Guidelines and empirical examples. In: Latan, H., Noonan, R. (Eds.), Partial Least Squares Path Modeling. Springer, Cham, pp. 173–195. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-64069-3_8.

Shiva, A., Narula, S., & Shahi, S. K. (2020). What drives retail investors’ investment decisions? Evidence from no mobile phone phobia (nomophobia) and investor fear of missing out (I–FOMO). Journal of Content, Community and Communication, 10(6), 2-20.

Next is to mention whether Common Method Bias was checked by the authors. Refer to the VIF Inner model values to be reported for investigation of CMB in the manuscript. Appropriate citation is mentioned as below:

Kock, N. (2015). “Common method bias in PLS-SEM: A full collinearity assessment approach”. International Journal of e-Collaboration (ijec), 11(4), 1-10.

The authors can avoid mentioning Harman’s single factor approach to investigate CMB in the study. Thus, with Kock (2015), the issue can be addressed properly.

The authors are advised to mention the two important citation because PLS SEM is used in the SmartPLS Software. Only recent guidelines are to be referred to in the study. Refer to para 5 and line number 320 to justify the claim with the citations mentioned below:

Hair, J.F., Risher, J.J., Sarstedt, M. and Ringle, C.M. (2019), "When to use and how to report the results of PLS-SEM", European Business Review, Vol. 31 No. 1, pp. 2-24. https://doi.org/10.1108/EBR-11-2018-0203

Hair, J. F., Hult, G. T. M., Ringle, C. M., & Sarstedt, M. (2022). A Primer on Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) (3 ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. forthecoming

In para 4.1, the authors are required to mention a table where the name of constructs, their respective items and the citations construct wise as to from where the questionnaire was adapted. The name of the table to referred as Content Validity. I am sending an excellent paper of professor Ringle to write the aforesaid table:

Saari, U. A., Damberg, S., Frömbling, L., & Ringle, C. M. (2021). “Sustainable consumption behavior of Europeans: The influence of environmental knowledge and risk perception on environmental concern and behavioral intention”. Ecological Economics, 189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107155

The authors are advised to provide HTMT ratio of correlation for describing discriminant validity instead of traditional method of Fornell and Larcker critetion. Kindly revise table 2 and represent HTMT values only.

For more clarity in describing HTMT, the authors can read following paper:

In para 5.2 of structural model, there are many important indicators which are missing:

Report VIF inner model values to report any multi-collinearity in the constructs.

Report F-square values

Report q-square values or preferably PLS Predict values, for predictive relevance of the final and key dependent variable of the model.

Report SRMR value of the estimated model.

All these values are to be reported as per the standards of Hair et al. (2019) and Hair et al. (2022). These two citations are critical to report SEM. The methodology to report the results are to be expressed as per the guidelines of Saari et al. (2021) and Sarstedt et al. (2017)

Sarstedt, M., Ringle, C. M., & Hair, J. F. (2017). “Partial least squares structural equation modeling”. Handbook of market research, 26(1), 1-40.

The authors must report Theoretical implications paragraph in the paper after discussion.

Further, managerial or practical implications are to be reported in the paper after theoretical implications.

Then a paragraph of Limitations of the study and future research direction to be reported.

Lastly, write your conclusion section.

I am pretty sure that after these inputs, the quality of manuscript will enhance and will fetch more citations in the academic world. All the best for the revisions.

Final Decision: Reconsider after major revision

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

We would like to present "point-by-point response" to the reviewer's precious comments like the attached file because of plenty of content.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have chosen a very important topic. The paper Is very interesting and timely. I suggest the authors incorporate some changes to further improve the quality of the paper.

There are many Typos and grammatical errors throughout the manuscript.
Figures clarity should be thoroughly enhanced.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this work. I highly appreciate the author's efforts in completing this study.

Author Response

Comments:

The authors have chosen a very important topic. The paper is very interesting and timely. I suggest the authors incorporate some changes to further improve the quality of the paper.

→ We greatly thank you for your understanding of the importance of our research topic and its timing, and greatly appreciate your positive comments and suggestions.

Suggestions:

There are many Typos and grammatical errors throughout the manuscript.\

→ Thank you for your comments on enhancing the readability issue. Considering the reviewer’s feedback, we did additional proofreading and editing on our manuscript, focusing on correcting typos and grammar errors.

Figures clarity should be thoroughly enhanced.

→ Thank you for your points of our lack of clarity about the figures in our paper. Following your suggestion, we improved the clarity and presentation of figures. On page 5, Figure 1 was improved with a better image ratio and format consistency. On page 10, Figure 2. (Hypotheses testing results of Korean data (top) and Japanese data (bottom)) was added to improve clarity and readability.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper focuses on "social fatigue", which is quite an interesting and important topic in current era especially at this pandemic time. This paper analyzes the SNS usage via two countries' cases and uses the reactance theory to evaluate and explain the diverse reacting behaviors. The hypotheses testing results are quite interesting, especially several paths that had been found from the dataset. The authors should give more explanation of the different paths such as the "Threats to freedom of usage-> Discontinuance of usage intention and Threats to freedom of usage-> Dissatisfaction paths" and "Threats to freedom of usage-> Discontinuance of usage intention" in different user cases. I wish authors can provide more data in the analysis so that the discovered facts should be more convinced and valid. Besides, the contents of the paper should be refined and polished.

Author Response

Comments:

→ We really appreciate your positive recommendation with feedback on our paper’s practical application to this pandemic time.

Suggestions:

The authors should give more explanation of the different paths such as the "Threats to freedom of usage-> Discontinuance of usage intention and Threats to freedom of usage-> Dissatisfaction paths" and "Threats to freedom of usage-> Discontinuance of usage intention" in different user cases.

→ Thank you for your comments on enhancing the explanation about different paths in different user cases. Following your suggestion, we added possible explanations per different user cases. And we also included an explanation about the missing path, which you kindly pointed out.
On page 11, we added a possible explanation about the Korean user case in the path ‘threats to freedom of usage -> Discontinuance of usage intention’ as follows.

A possible explanation for this result is that Korean users tend to make the immediate decision of discontinuing the service from its culture which prefers quick and direct actions to solve the problems.

→In addition, on page 11, we also inserted an additional explanation about the path between ‘Threats to freedom of usage-> Discontinuance of usage intention mediated by Dissatisfaction’ as follows.

In addition, there is a consistent result of positive paths from threats to freedom of usage to discontinuous usage intention mediated by dissatisfaction from two countries, which solidifies empirical grounding of previous study which addressed users’ behavior of discontinuing the social networking service through satisfaction factors in the context of psychological reactance.

I wish authors can provide more data in the analysis so that the discovered facts should be more convinced and valid. Besides, the contents of the paper should be refined and polished.

→ Thank you for your concerns on the transparency of the data as well as the contents of the paper. Considering your feedback, we added more information about the dataset, such as VIF inner model, F-square values, Q-square, SRMR values of the estimated model in the explanation and result tables.

The study also tested predictive relevance by using Q² value, and the result showed that all values exceed the threshold value of 0 [72], indicating that the model exhibits adequate predictive relevance.
Table 3. Results of common method bias testing using latent variable-level VIF values is created.
Table 4. Results of predictive relevance testing using Q-square (Q²) values is created.
SRMR values and F-square values were added in Table 5. Hypotheses testing results of Korean data (top) and Japanese data (bottom).
Values of F-square were added with other values in paragraphs of section 5.2.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Author(s)

Congratulations for considering suggestions in your manuscript. In my opinion, the manuscript has improved a lot from it original version and with the appropriate citations of recent years and correct reporting of PLS SEM.

Abstract

The abstract is correctly amended by the authors. No further changes required.

Introduction

All issues are addressed by the authors in the Introduction section.

Literature Review

The Reactance Theory in the manuscript is now perfectly explained.

Research Model Development

In my opinion, the authors must not leave any stone unturned at this stage. The authors are advised to kindly write 5-8 lines of justification for framing the hypotheses of H6, H8 and H9. Simply stating a line with 3 citations is not enough for the readers of the journal. In future, your justification can help prospective researchers to conceive an idea and can cite your manuscript also. Kindly, add a paragraph for correct framing of H6,H8 and H9.

Methods

The authors need to reconsider the sampling technique as there is no “Simple sampling method”. In case they are pointing out for Simple Random sampling then also it is not correct as it leads to probability sampling method where population is known. In your study, can authors’ justify that the population was known to them from which sample was derived? I guess no.

Please consider to report ‘Purposive Sampling’ technique as it would be better to justify Non-probability sampling technique to support non-probability PLS SEM technique also.

As far as other corrections the authors have done full justice with the manuscript. Great work.

The authors may consider to report inner VIF values in Table 5 just the way f-square values are written. As per Saari et al (2022) guidelines, the authors can see the table and reporting standards for Hypotheses testing results. Further, the authors have MISSED a very important aspect in Table 5. The authors are required to report STABDARDISED BETA as this is the main aspect in regression. How can authors’ skip this aspect? The authors are required to mention:

Hypotheses name

Path

Standardized Beta

t-statistics

Confidence Intervals

f- square values

VIF inner values

Results

Rest of the aspects are not required as per the reporting standards of Hair et al (2019) and (2022) and Saari et al (2021)

The authors must report Theoretical implications paragraph in the paper after discussion. Please report that how the theory has been advanced with the contributions from your manuscript.

All the best for the revisions.

Final Decision: Reconsider after minor revision

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

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