Extending the Theory of Planned Behavior in the Social Commerce Context: A Meta-Analytic SEM (MASEM) Approach

The theory of planned behavior (TPB) is popular in social commerce research, but existing studies have yielded inconclusive and inconsistent findings. As TPB was developed before the introduction of the Internet, Web 2.0 technologies, and social media, it is time to evaluate whether its relevance, effectiveness, novelty, and parsimony may have deteriorated due to temporal factors and the emergence of new Information Systems (IS) artifacts. In this work, an extended TPB2 is proposed by integrating social support, and MASEM analysis was conducted using a pooled correlation matrix. The findings revealed that TPB2 can better capture the nature of social commerce, as it can explain 28.4% of the variance in attitude, 59.0% of the variance in behavioral intention, and 9% of the variance in use behavior. In addition, it indicates that masculinity and uncertainty avoidance are the most significant Hofstedian cultural dimensions. The theoretical and managerial implications are also discussed along with the research agenda.