Social commerce is emerging as an important platform in e-commerce, primarily due to the increased popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. To understand the user's social sharing and social shopping intention in social networking Web sites, we conducted an empirical study on a popular microblog to investigate how social factors such as social support and relationship quality affect the user's intention of future participation in social commerce. The

more »

... indicate that both factors play a critical role. Social support and Web site quality positively influence the user's intention to use social commerce and to continue using a social networking site. These effects are found to be mediated by the quality of the relationship between the user and the social networking Web site. Our findings not only help researchers interpret why social commerce has become popular, but also assist practitioners in developing better social commerce strategy. KEY WORDS AND PHRASES: Participation continuance, relationship quality, social commerce, social support, Web site quality. on Information Systems (ICIS) and Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS). EFRAIM TURBAN (efraimtur@yahoo.com) is a well-known scholar in information systems and e-commerce. He received his MBA and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. Currently, he is a visiting scholar at the Pacific Institute for Information System Management, University of Hawaii. Prior to this, he was on the faculty of several universities, including