Abstract

While the adoption of social media gets prominence in the developed world, its widespread adoption has not yet occurred across many organisations in developing countries and very little empirical research focusing on Women’s Non-Governmental Organisations (henceforth, WNGOs) has been conducted to date. The aim of this study is to fill this knowledge gap by investigating the factors affecting adoption of social media by WNGOs in North-West of Nigeria. Built around the Diffusion of Innovation Theory (DOI), Technology-Organisation-Environment (TOE) Framework and Information Sharing Behaviour (ISB) factors, the study develops an integrated model consisting of twelve variables to investigate factors that affect WNGOs’ social media adoption. The study employed the quantitative approach. To test the research’s proposed model, a survey questionnaire was self-administered to a sample of 327 respondents drawn from eighty-seven registered WNGOs. Out of the 327 questionnaires distributed, 250 usable questionnaires were completed and returned, giving a response rate of 76.5%. Data collected were analysed by means of descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and multiple regression techniques. The results of multi-linear regression analysis indicate that the environmental factors are the strongest predictor of WNGOs’ social media adoption. Similarly, organisational and information sharing behaviour factors all have a significant impact on social media adoption. In contrast, the technological factor was found to be the least predictor. Major implications for the study are policy implications, improving WNGO practice, advancing scholarly research on Information Technology (IT) adoption and theoretical contributions through extending previous research conducted in developed countries in a new setting.

Key words: Social media, information and communication technological, social/environmental organisations, social change(s).