Gender differences in intentional social action: we-intention to engage in social network-facilitated team collaboration

The growth and popularity of Web 2.0 applications help people to build and maintain their social networks online and further encourage social network-facilitated team collaboration. In this study, we conceptualized the use of instant messaging in social network-facilitated team collaboration as an intentional social action and further investigated the effect of gender differences in the development of we-intention (i.e. collective intention) to engage in such collaboration. A research model was developed and empirically tested with 482 university students in Mainland China. The results demonstrated that the effects of attitude, positive anticipated emotions, and group norms on we-intention were more important for men, whereas the effects of social identity and negative anticipated emotions were more significant for women to collectively participate in social network-facilitated team collaboration. We believe the implications of this study would shed considerable light on both research and practice. Journal of Information Technology (2010) 25, 152-169. doi: 10.1057/jit.2010.12 Published online 25 May 2010