Page 130 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

Luchuan LIU & Kai SUN / Analysis of the relationship between microblogging users’ affections and users’ satisfaction 129

satisfaction;
Hypothesis 2 (H2): Micro-blog users’ negative affections have a significant negative impact on their
satisfaction.
The relationship between IS user affections and satisfaction will also be influenced by other
factors. For example, Kim and H. C. Chan (2007) verify that pleasantness and arousal of
affections in the use of mobile network can develop a preference attitude, which can lead to
continued use behavior; Karahanna, Seligman, and Polites (2009) verify that affective reactions
like satisfaction in the use of website can produce website stickiness. Although there is no direct
evidence that can prove the correlation between IS user affections and satisfaction, A. T. Lu, J.
J. Zhang and Harris (2012) in the study of the relationship between lovers find that gender can
regulate the relationship between attachment and satisfaction of couples. For example, when
setting anxiety attachment as the dependent variable, gender regulates the relationship between
commitment and satisfaction and anxiety attachment. In the research of employee satisfaction,
Hou and X. P. Liu (2009) find that for employees of various ages, positive affections and
negative affections have varying degrees of impact on job satisfaction. They also find that years
of work also affect the relationship between affections and job satisfaction. Applying the above
research results of the relationship between affections and satisfaction in the research context
of this paper, we speculated that micro-blog users’ gender, age and use experience (time of use)
were all likely to regulate the relationship between affections and satisfaction. Thus, we make
the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 3 (H3): Micro-blog users’ gender can regulate their affection-satisfaction relationship;
Hypothesis 4 (H4): Micro-blog users’ age can regulate their affection-satisfaction relationship;
Hypothesis 5 (H5): Micro-blog users’ use experience can regulate their affection-satisfaction
relationship.

3 Research methods and design

In the previous affection studies, small-scale pre-measurement is usually used to determine the
specific affective states included in positive affections and negative affections. These specific
affective states are then used in a wide range of measurement (Geng, 2007; S. L. Zhang &
Gao, 2011). Or researchers choose several affections from basic human affections according to
the affection theory in psychology and measure them (Y. Wang & Y. J. Luo, 2005; Westbrook
& Oliver, 1991). However, affective experience relies on specific situations; affections that
appear often in one situation may not appear often in other situations (Page & Mapstone, 2010).
Therefore, we think affective variables and methods used in non micro-blog researches cannot
be used for reference directly. We plan to break the limitations of previous studies and collect
and analyze data in two phases. In the first phase, we use appropriate methods to measure the
major affections micro-blog users experience in the course of use. In the second phase, we
measure the intensity of these affections and the relationship between them and user satisfaction.