A Theory of Planned Behavior Perspective on Blog Service Switching

Blog has been one of the social technologies that greatly change many online users' daily lives. Bloggers not only can publish personal dairies on it, but also can develop relationships with other bloggers or blog visitors. Although many blog services are provided freely, its service switching behavior have attracted much attention from practitioners. Blog service switching is a specific instance of the broader social technology switching phenomenon. It differs from general usage behavior as it involves both membership attraction and retention. Thus, prior research on information technology usage may not fully account for the phenomenon. In this study, we adopt a theory of planned behavior perspective and build up a switching model to explain blog service switching behavior. We employ a survey to explain how two quality beliefs (service quality and quality of alternatives) and two types of costs (sunk costs and relationship costs) exert influence in determining bloggers' switching behavior. Discussions and implications are provided to better understand the switching behavior of blog and other social technologies.