Social network services and their effects on network social capital: an instrumental variables approach

The purpose of this study is to examine the association between social network services and network social capital while adopting an instrumental variables approach. This study includes a simple random sample of 491 respondents gathered through a cross-sectional survey in South Korea. The results show that users of social network services were higher in their network social capital in comparison with non-users of social network services. The results further suggest that it is high intensity users rather than low intensity users who are higher in network social capital than non-users of social network services. The current study contributes to the literature as it empirically investigates the association between social network services and network social capital, while including non-users of social network and tackling the possible endogeneity problem of the usage of social network services.