Determinants of Social Networking Usage and Regret in Two Cultural Settings - France and Thailand.

Regret is an unpleasant outcome of social networking sites (SNS) usage which is exponentially experienced and could negatively affect the continuance intention to social networking on SNS. In this paper, we address this issue with reference to the Uses and Gratification Theory and position interpersonal connectivity, entertainment, exhibitionism and voyeurism as determinants of social networking usage and also of social networking regret. We investigate how actual social networking usage could lead to regret and how both could affect the continuous intention of social networking usage on Facebook. The model is tested within two samples representing a Western culture (France, N=246) and an Asian culture (Thailand, N=206 respectively). Our results show that SNS usage and regret are experienced differently by the two samples. To date, empirical works that investigate SNS usage and regret in a multicultural setting have been rare. This paper contributes to filling this theoretical and empirical gap.