With a little help of my peers. The supportive role of online contacts for the unemployed
Journal article, Peer reviewed
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http://hdl.handle.net/11250/278800Utgivelsesdato
2014Metadata
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Sammendrag
Unemployment is an unfortunate reality, whose overcoming often depends on social support, among other
factors. Online social media, such as social network sites and communities, may offer an additional source
of such support for unemployed people. This paper posits that online social support plays an important role
in unemployed people’s ability to cope with unemployment and search for new employment. The paper
develops and tests a structural equation model of the influence of online-mediated, enabling and caring
social support on job search self-efficacy, which may foster the job search behaviour of unemployed persons.
In addition, we control for gender, age, user experience, and attitude towards the Internet. Based on
1,322 telephone interviews with unemployed individuals in Germany, we find that online social support
drives job search behaviour. Our results show that social support derived from new information and communication
technology counteracts the adverse effect of being unemployed to a certain degree. Enabling
support and caring support experienced through social media both lead to higher job search self-efficacy,
which, in turn, fosters job search behaviour. Furthermore, our model shows that these relationships differ
by gender, age, user experience, and attitude towards the Internet.
Beskrivelse
This is the authors’ accepted, refereed manuscript to the article