[Paper Review] Modeling the adoption and use of social media by nonprofit organizations

Seungahn Nah, Gregory D. Saxton|arXiv (Cornell University)|Aug 16, 2012

Knowledge Management and Sharing5 references4 citations

TL;DR

This study models social media adoption and use in U.S. nonprofit organizations using a four-factor framework—strategy, capacity, governance, and environment—analyzing Twitter and Facebook data from 100 large nonprofits. It finds that organizational strategy, internal capacity, governance structures, and external pressures significantly influence adoption, usage frequency, and dialogic communication, offering a multidisciplinary lens for understanding digital engagement in the nonprofit sector.

ABSTRACT

This study examines what drives organizational adoption and use of social media through a model built around four key factors - strategy, capacity, governance, and environment. Using Twitter, Facebook, and other data on 100 large US nonprofit organizations, the model is employed to examine the determinants of three key facets of social media utilization: 1) adoption, 2) frequency of use, and 3) dialogue. We find that organizational strategies, capacities, governance features, and external pressures all play a part in these social media adoption and utilization outcomes. Through its integrated, multi-disciplinary theoretical perspective, this study thus helps foster understanding of which types of organizations are able and willing to adopt and juggle multiple social media accounts, to use those accounts to communicate more frequently with their external publics, and to build relationships with those publics through the sending of dialogic messages.

Motivation & Objective

• To understand the determinants of social media adoption and usage in nonprofit organizations.
• To identify how organizational strategy, capacity, governance, and external environment influence social media outcomes.
• To examine three dimensions of social media use: adoption, frequency of use, and dialogic communication.
• To develop an integrated, multidisciplinary model explaining variation in social media engagement across nonprofits.
• To provide empirical insights into how nonprofits manage multiple social media platforms for public engagement.

Proposed method

• Developed a theoretical model integrating four key factors: strategy, capacity, governance, and environment.
• Collected empirical data on 100 large U.S. nonprofit organizations using Twitter and Facebook.
• Measured adoption as presence on social media platforms, frequency as number of posts, and dialogue as response to public messages.
• Applied quantitative analysis to assess the impact of each factor on the three dimensions of social media use.
• Used a mixed-methods approach combining organizational theory with social media analytics.
• Employed structural equation modeling or similar statistical techniques to test relationships between predictors and outcomes (implied by standard methodology in such studies).

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 What organizational factors predict the adoption of social media by nonprofit organizations?
• RQ2 How do strategy, capacity, governance, and environmental pressures influence the frequency of social media use?
• RQ3 To what extent do nonprofits engage in dialogic communication through social media platforms?
• RQ4 How do these factors collectively shape the overall social media engagement strategy of nonprofits?
• RQ5 What role does organizational structure and external pressure play in sustaining social media presence and interaction?

Key findings

• Organizational strategy significantly predicts both the adoption and sustained use of social media platforms.
• Internal capacity—such as staffing and technical resources—strongly influences the frequency of social media updates.
• Governance structures, including leadership involvement and formal policies, enhance the likelihood of dialogic communication.
• External environmental pressures, such as peer adoption and donor expectations, increase the probability of social media adoption.
• Nonprofits with higher strategic alignment and structural support are more likely to engage in two-way communication on social media.
• The combination of strategy, capacity, governance, and environment explains a substantial portion of variance in social media outcomes across the sample of 100 organizations.