When Does Facebooking Make Us Avoid Risks? The Effect of Social Networking Orientation on Risk Preference

Abstract

Will consumers' social networking orientations influence their psychological functioning on subsequent tasks in seemingly remote, unrelated domains? Prior research on social capital suggests the distinction between a bonding orientation, with which people seek to cement connectedness among exclusive and relatively homogeneous groups, and a bridging orientation, with which people focus on creating new contacts with different groups, resulting in spanning diverse social cleavages. Building on the resource depletion paradigm, we propose and find that consumers become more risk-averse after performing bridging- versus bonding-oriented activities on Facebook. We also confirm the depletion of risk-taking resources as the underlying process by showing its mediating role between social networking orientation and risk preference. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.