Social Media User Acceptance on Instagram Health Information Recommendation: A Transactive Memory System Perspective

Abstract

Social media revolutionize to exchange of health information. People can easily share and seek information to help them in diagnosing and curing disease. Many scholars have also explored the health information exchange. However, little research focuses on what drives people to adopt health information or recommendation on social media, specifically Instagram. This research explores the phenomenon by utilizing a transactive memory system (TMS) as the primary theoretical lenses. A quantitative survey and analysis were conducted to test several hypotheses developed regarding the phenomenon. The findings showed that social media user acceptance of health information/recommendation was mostly influenced by the communication quality and the credibility of the information. This study also found that communication quality was influenced by two TMS components: specialization and credibility. Furthermore, formal communication was also found to be more influential as the input of TMS compared to informal communication. The implication of the findings is also discussed.