Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Information Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijinfomgt Exploring the efects of extrinsic motivation on consumer behaviors in social commerce: Revealing consumers’ perceptions of social commerce benefts Xuequn Wang a , Xiaolin Lin b, ⁎ , Marilyn K. Spencer c a School of Engineering and Information Technology, Murdoch University, Perth, WA, 6150, Australia b Department of Computer Information and Decision Management, Paul and Virginia Engler College of Business, West Texas A&M University, Canyon, TX, 79016, United States c Department of Decision Sciences and Economics, College of Business, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi, TX, 78412, United States ARTICLEINFO Keywords: e-commerce Social commerce Extrinsic motivation Self-determination theory Social commerce beneft ABSTRACT The rise of social media has created a new e-commerce platform called social commerce. In social commerce, e-vendors such as Amazon may integrate social media with their traditional e-commerce sites. Based on self-determination theory and social commerce literature, we develop a model illustrating how social commerce features may impact consumer behaviors and facilitate social commerce benefts from the extrinsic motivation perspective. We identify four types of extrinsic motivation including external motivation, introjected motivation, identifed motivation, and integrated mo- tivation; and we examine their infuences on consumers’ intention to contribute social commerce information, which in turn leads to their subsequent behaviors and increases the perceived beneft of social commerce. We also consider the moderating efect of gender in the formulation of social commerce benefts. Based on longitudinal survey data from Amazon consumers, we fnd that 1) consumers’ external and identifed motivation has a positive impact on intention to contribute social commerce information; 2) consumers’ intention is positively associated with their future behaviors, which in turn facilitate their perceptions of social commerce benefts; and 3) gender moderates the impact of behavior on social commerce benefts. 1. Introduction The intersection of social media and traditional e-commerce has given the rise of a new world, social commerce. As a new form of e- commerce, social commerce facilitates new channels for consumers to improve not only their purchase decisions but also shopping experi- ences via its primary features, such as user interactions and user-gen- erated content (e.g., Alalwan, Rana, Dwivedi, & Algharabat, 2017; Dwivedi, Kapoor, & Chen, 2015; Hajli, 2015; Kapoor et al., 2018; Kim& Kim, 2018; Liang, Ho, Li, & Turban, 2011; Ng, 2013; Zhang, Guo, Hu, & Liu, 2017). Social commerce ofers an innovative channel for en- terprises to build brand loyalty and promote sales through customer engagement in social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook (Lee, Lee, & Oh, 2015; Zheng, Cheung, Lee, & Liang, 2015). Social commerce thus provides a social media-based approach for business practices and has gained increasing attention from researchers. Therefore, capturing the essence of consumer behaviors in social commerce is essential for both researchers and practitioners to gain insights into the im- plementation of social commerce (Zhang & Benyoucef, 2016). Consumer behaviors may vary depending on specifc social commerce scenarios, including adding commercial features into social media and/or adding social media features into traditional e-commerce (Huang & Benyoucef, 2013; Liang et al., 2011; Lin, Li, & Wang, 2017; Zhang & Benyoucef, 2016). Prior studies have mainly focused on the frst scenario and explicated how consumers behave in responding to commerce activities in the context of SNSs (e.g., Hajli, 2015; Hajli & Sims, 2015; Liang et al., 2011; Zhang, Lu, Gupta, & Zhao, 2014; Zheng et al., 2015). However, there is relatively little literature that focuses on explaining consumer behaviors in the second scenario - adding social media features in e-commerce. Consumers may behave diferently across var- ious scenarios and these diferences have important implications for theoretical development and informing practitioners guidelines. In the frst scenario of adding commercial features into social media, con- sumers tend to build relationships with each other through social in- teractions and the exchange of social support, which afects their pur- chase decision behaviors (Liang et al., 2011; Ng, 2013). In the second scenario of adding social media features into traditional e-commerce, consumers’ real identities are often inaccessible and they may not be able to maintain their social circles on e-commerce sites. Therefore, the social interactions between consumers in the second scenario may be https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2018.11.010 Received 21 March 2018; Received in revised form 11 November 2018; Accepted 11 November 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: xuequnwang1600@gmail.com (X. Wang), xlin@wtamu.edu (X. Lin), Marilyn.Spencer@tamucc.edu (M.K. Spencer). International Journal of Information Management 45 (2019) 163–175 0268-4012/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T