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Delays have become one of the most often cited complaints of Web users. Long delays often cause users to abandon their searches, but how do tolerable delays affect information search behavior? Intuitively, we would expect that tolerable delays should induce decreased information search. We conducted two experiments and found that as delay increased, a point occurs at which time within-page information search increases ; that is, search behavior remained the same until a tipping point occurs where delay increases the depth of search. We argue that situation normality explains this phenomenon; users have become accustomed to tolerable delays up to a point (our research suggests between 7 and 11 seconds) after which search behavior changes. That is, some delay is expected, but as delay becomes noticeable but not long enough to cause the abandonment of search, an increase occurs in the "stickiness" of Web pages such that users examine more information on each page before moving to new pages. The net impact of tolerable delays was counter intuitive: tolerable delays had no impact on the total amount of data searched in the first experiment, but induced users to examine more data points in the second experiment.

Purpose Social networking sites (SNSs) continue to grow in popularity with competition in the market growing as well. The purpose of this paper is to examine three research questions to determine how competition within the SNS area may affect the continuance intention on the incumbent SNS, Facebook. The first question examines the relationship between having an account on one of the four different SNSs and the impact on continuance intention. The second question examines attitudes toward specific alternatives and continuance intention on the incumbent SNS. The third question takes a broader examination of general attitudes about alternative attractiveness and attitude toward switching to predict continuance intention. A post hoc analysis was conducted to further understand the impact of specific SNS alternative attitudes on general attitudes. Design/methodology/approach Based on a survey of 918 users, this research examines the three questions using various methods including ANCOVA to examine question 1 and multiple structural equation models to examine questions 2, 3 and the post hoc analysis. Findings The analysis of the models suggests that both alternative attractiveness and attitude toward switching have the greatest impact on the continuance intention of the incumbent site. Specific sites were found to be complements or substitutes for the incumbent. The viewing of the specific alternative site as an alternative to Facebook had a negative impact on continuance intention. The general model of alternative attractiveness and attitude toward switching explained a moderate to substantial amount of continuance intention. Originality/value Although use and abandonment of SNSs have been examined extensively, minimal attention has been given to the impact that alternative SNSs have on continuance intentions of a user’s primary SNS.

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