This paper aims to investigate how social capital (e.g. structural, cognitive and relational) influences trust (e.g. cognitive-/affective-based trust), which includes influencing knowledge-sharing behavior for Indonesian Facebook users in the context of social networking sites.
Indonesian students were recruited for an online survey study. Structural equation modeling was used to test the research hypotheses.
Social capital has a crucial role in increasing cognitive-based trust and affective-based trust. Furthermore, affective-based trust is a partial mediator between social capital and knowledge-sharing behavior, whereas cognitive-based trust is a full mediator between social capital and knowledge-sharing behavior.
This study is limited to Indonesian Facebook users. Future research needs to examine specific conditions, situational contexts and sub-cultures that may influence social capital, trust and knowledge-sharing behaviors of Facebook users in other parts of the world.
The education stakeholders can identify the user objectives and rational concerns to improve their social capital and trust and support their valuable and unique experiences to share knowledge.
This study contributes to the literature on virtual communities. Specifically, it considers how social capital influences trust, which subsequently affects knowledge-sharing behavior based on the uses and gratifications theory among Facebook users.
