Understanding adolescents’ unfriending on Facebook by applying an extended theory of planned behaviour

Karen Verswijvel, Wannes Heirman, Michel Walrave and Kris Hardies

Behaviour and Information Technology, 2019, vol. 38, issue 8, 807-819

Abstract: Becoming friends on Facebook does not always guarantee long-term friendships as users have the possibility to unfriend people. This unfriending behaviour is frequently occurring and might have negative consequences for both parties. To gain insight into the factors influencing adolescents’ unfriending, the current study made use of an extended version of the theory of planned behaviour. To enrich the theoretical framework, we included antecedents related to adolescents’ friendship management on Facebook, namely their number of friends, their friendship acceptance threshold, and their degree of public communication. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 1.117 adolescents. SEM analyses indicated that both subjective norm and attitude were related to behavioural intention, which in turn was related to adolescents’ unfriending behaviour. Perceived behavioural control was only associated with adolescents’ unfriending behaviour. Regarding the additional factors, the size of adolescents’ friend network was positively related to their confidence in the ability to unfriend people. Adolescents’ friendship acceptance threshold was negatively related to their attitude, whereas adolescents’ degree of public communication was positively associated with their perceived behavioural control and the experienced social pressure to unfriend.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0144929X.2018.1557255 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:tbitxx:v:38:y:2019:i:8:p:807-819

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/tbit20

DOI: 10.1080/0144929X.2018.1557255

Access Statistics for this article

Behaviour and Information Technology is currently edited by Dr Panos P Markopoulos

More articles in Behaviour and Information Technology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().