Predicting Consumers’ Usage Intention Towards User-Generated Content: A Hybrid SEM-ANN Approach

With the change in the communication pattern, end-users are engaging in creating content and referring to the content created by other users while making purchase decisions. This research aims at modelling factors affecting consumers’ usage intention (UI) towards user-generated content (UGC) using Need for Cognition (NfC) as a moderator of the proposed relationships. The factors affecting consumers’ UI involve perceived usefulness (PU), source credibility (SC), information quality (IQ) and NfC. Further, a novel attempt has been made by using the neural network approach to assess the predictive accuracy of the model. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 298 consumers through a survey. Data were analysed using two-stage structural equation modelling (SEM) and artificial neural network (ANN). All the independent variables viz., PU, SC, IQ and NfC significantly affect attitude towards UGC, which in turn affects UI. Results of multi-group analysis and a series of chi-square difference tests reveal that a NfC significantly moderates the relationship between PU and attitude, as well as that between SC and attitude. The root mean square error values from the neural network analysis suggest that the models show good predictive accuracy. This study provides a novel assessment of the usage of a hybrid SEM-ANN approach for understanding of UGC by incorporating NfC as a moderator in shaping consumers’ attitudes and intentions to use UGC.