Value co-creation on social attachment toward social platforms: evidence from developing countries

Purpose As a high-reward strategy to differentiate social platforms, value co-creation is increasingly becoming a tool to enhance customers' social attachment. However, there is still a lack of academic understanding of the value co-creation that enables users to build social attachment with social platforms. To address this challenge, we develop and then examine a theoretical model grounded in value co-creation theory considering the relationship between value co-creation and social attachment, and also explore the mediating effect of user experience and the moderating effect of self-disclosure. Design/methodology/approach This study takes representative social platform users as the research object, chooses Questionnaire Star as the platform for questionnaire distribution and collection and collects 531 eligible data through the snowball sampling questionnaire method. And then, MPLUS7.4 is used to analyze the data and thus examine our proposed theoretical model. Findings The results of structural equation modeling analysis suggest that two dimensions of value co-creation (i.e. initiated value co-creation and spontaneous value co-creation) affect social attachment not only directly but also indirectly (i.e. the mediating role of user experience) and that self-disclosure moderates the impact of value co-creation affecting social attachment. Originality/value This study verifies the impact of different dimensions of value co-creation toward social platforms on social attachment, showing that value co-creation plays an important role in developing users' social attachment and provides practical implications for promoting the sustainable development of social platforms and building users' psychological well-being.