Use of social media: empirical comparison between Europe And Middle East

Social media as an amazing active and fast-moving domain, is playing an important role shaping our lives. The purpose of this research is to understand the drivers of social media use in the West and Arab world. Societies are incessantly changing through social media, which is helping spreading the creation, modification and discussion of multiple contents. Yet, different cultures might present dissimilar behaviours towards this vehicle of communication for diverse reasons such as, among others, their access to technology and contents, or cultural influence. Studies about social media use combining two cultures are scarce conducing us to an undiscovered research field to explore. We developed the contents of knowledge on social media use by proposing an innovative comparison between Europe and Middle East, which integrates Venkatesh´s extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2). An online questionnaire was created to collect data from users within both cultures. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the outcome. The results revealed a significant disparity on what triggers social media behaviour in those two different regions. At the time that performance expectancy influences on the European side, the effort expectancy was found to be the most predominant trigger into use of social media in the Middle East, by affecting behaviour intention. The results underline the importance of social media nowadays and enriches the knowledge of the subject into different cultures. The present study contributes with new insights into factors that might be determinant regarding acceptance and use behaviour and continues on the discussion on why and how people engage in social media, independently on nation or culture