Exploring the effects of Social Value on Social Network Dependence

In a world where around 3.5 billions of the entire population are active social media users, the individual usage behavior of social network sites and related aspects should require further investigation. Specifically, this paper focuses on the social network dependence, considering the utilitarian and goal-oriented facet rather than the psychological one, usually referred as addiction. It combines an analysis of personal cultural values with Media System Dependency theory, investigating the role of social axioms in affecting the social network dependence. Using a large dataset composed by 622 observations, we developed and validated a research model to shed new light on the investigation of dependence phenomena in the context of social network sites, exploring the role of individual beliefs