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The Diffusion of Microblogging in the Public Sector: Evidence from Chinese Provinces

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Social Media and Local Governments

Part of the book series: Public Administration and Information Technology ((PAIT,volume 15))

Abstract

Microblogging has been increasingly used in the public sector across the world, and it is pivotal to understand the drivers of their diffusion. This chapter adapts innovation adoption and diffusion theories and uses panel data of China’s 31 provinces (2010–2012) to empirically examine the diffusion of microblogging among government agencies and officials. The results suggest that the drivers of agency and individual microblogging are subtly distinct, implying their adoption may follow different routines. The findings also show that agencies and officials in jurisdictions with larger population, higher level of citizen demand, under advocating leadership, and bordering on pioneering peers are more likely to use microblogging.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Zhang and Jia (2011) only disclosed top 20 provinces in institutional and personal accounts of government microblogging, respectively. The data for other provinces are from the author’s personal contact with Zhang (2013-06-14).

  2. 2.

    The Pearson’s correlation coefficients among the three citizen demand measures are all higher than 0.90, suggesting they are substantially overlapped in measuring the same thing. One factor with Eigenvalue (=2.665) larger than 1.0 is retained, explaining 88.85 % of total variance (χ2 = 162.67, p < 0.001). The factor scores using regression scoring are employed to gauge citizen demand.

  3. 3.

    The Pearson’s correlation coefficient between citizen demand factor and fiscal health decreases substantially from 0.814 to 0.769, and the multicollinearity threat is then depressed.

  4. 4.

    We also control year dummies in the model to take account the accumulative effect of social media diffusion in government, but it is highly correlated with other independent variables (e.g., inter-jurisdictional competition effects) and we drop it from the final model. Municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing) are commonly leaders in adopting new policies, practices, and technologies, whereas autonomous regions (Xinjiang, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, and Guangxi) often lag behind in the adoption of government innovations. Geographical distribution may also matter for the adoption of new technologies by different provinces. Coastal provinces (e.g., Zhejiang and Jiangsu) are usually more open to new concepts and practices, and they are more likely to adopt social media. In contrast, inland provinces (Shaanxi and Yunnan) are generally conservative and reluctant to accept new technologies like microblogging. We can create provincial dummies to take provincial administrative attributes and geographical distribution in to account, but their variances are mostly absorbed in other jurisdictional attributes such as citizen demand and fiscal health. For instance, municipalities are much higher in urbanization education rate while autonomous regions are all located in western region. To sum up, we drop these variables in the final model to make it parsimonious.

  5. 5.

    The average VIF values for agency and official microblogging models are 2.02 and 2.01, respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nanyang Centre for Public Administration, Nanyang Technological University, S3.2-B4-20, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    Liang Ma

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Correspondence to Liang Ma .

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  1. Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences Department of Public Administration, Uludağ University, Nilufer, Turkey

    Mehmet Zahid Sobaci

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Ma, L. (2016). The Diffusion of Microblogging in the Public Sector: Evidence from Chinese Provinces. In: Sobaci, M. (eds) Social Media and Local Governments. Public Administration and Information Technology, vol 15. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17722-9_10

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