A study on the effects of technology acceptance and economic factors on the loyalty of power bloggers

Power bloggers have become one of the most important resources of blog-service companies, and only those who attract and secure power bloggers will be able to have competitive edge and profitability in blog-related businesses. This study examines the effects of technology-acceptance factors and economical factors on the loyalty of power bloggers. The analysis results show that the usefulness, power of social influence and enjoyment positively affect the attitude and intention to continuous use. The relationship between the attitude and intention to continuous use is demonstrated as significant. The economical benefit exhibits weakly positive influence on the attitude to blogging, but not on the intention. This indicates that although many power bloggers receive economic benefits through their blogging activities, such economical benefits do not have big impact on their activities and the intention to use. The blog-service providers may use the analysis results when developing new blog services. In particular, the usefulness, which is often considered as one of the most important factors in the success of the blogosphere, is found to have less impact than the enjoyment among power bloggers. This is because blog users, especially power bloggers, use the blog not for a specific purpose or for generating a special product; most of them use the blog to satisfy their own personal desires. When developing blog services, therefore, it is important to cater to the users' enjoyment and their psychological compensation. What is surprising is that the effect of the economical factor is not as significant as one might have expected. This implies that the new blog services that provide profit sharing or advertising-revenue sharing may not be as successful as one would have hoped for in maintaining the loyalty of power bloggers.