Role of Social Media in Cross-cultural Settings to Foster Individual Creativity: An Empirical Research in China

Abstract

Social media has become ubiquitous public platform intervening individual learning process. However, limited empirical research has explored how social media impacts individual creativity. This research examined the effects of social media usage on the development of individual self-efficacy, creativity and the role of perceived organizational support moderating the relationships between social media usage and self-efficacy. With the data collected from 248 international students studying at Chinese universities, the current research indicates that social media usage enhances individual creativity partially through the conduit of self-efficacy. Furthermore, perceived organizational support was found to significantly strengthen the relationships between two dimensions of social media usage (informational and socializing) and self-efficacy respectively. The findings greatly contribute to the cross-cultural studies of social media usage and reveal the mechanism how social media impacts on individual development.