Fake or Fact News? Investigating Users’ Online Fake News Sharing Behavior: The Moderating Role of Social Networking Sites (SNS) Dependency

The purpose of this study is to test and validate a modified stimulus organism response (SOR) theory with a bi-dimensional attitude toward fake news sharing. This study examines the effect of various gratifications, i.e., hedonic, social, and utilitarian, with bi-dimensional attitudes and intentions toward sharing fake news. The moderating effect of social networking sites (SNS) dependency is also investigated to examine the attitude-intention gap. Data were collected from a sample of 327 social media users and further analyzed using PLS-SEM. The modified SOR theory described significant variance in fake news sharing intentions. Findings reveal that cognitive attitude is a strong predictor of sharing fake intentions than affective attitude. All gratifications factors except hedonic gratification have significant positive association with attitude which in turn influence the users’ toward fake news sharing. Moreover, the findings also proved the moderating effect of SNS dependency. This study explains remarkable insights for researchers, practitioners, social media users, and social media platform providers.