The Impact of Demographic Characteristics on the Relationship Between Trust, Individuals' Attitudes Towards Social Media and Intention to Use Social Media in an
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NERGiS AZiZ, Istanbul, Turkey
This research investigates the role of demographics such as age, gender, education, and marital status on the relationship between trust towards social media, individuals' attitudes towards and intention to use social media. A face-to-face questionnaire was conducted to a convenience sample of 706 participants in different districts in Istanbul (Turkey). Study results showed that there was positive relationship between trust towards social media and attitudes towards social media use and age was only variable among control variables influencing this relationship. Attitudes towards social media use were positively related to behavioral intention to use social media and control variables such as age and education influenced this relationship. However, gender and marital status had no significant impact neither on attitudes nor on behavioral intention. Study findings can be used as a basis for developing different strategies that cultivate positive attitudes for different demographic segments.
Key words: Social media, demographics, trust, the theory of planned behavior (TPB), Turkey, the Euro-Mediterrenian region
Emerging Economy
INTRODUCTION
The popularity of social network services (SNS) have increased over the past years. According to information on the most popular networks worldwide as of January 2016 provided by Statista
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(2016), one of the world's largest statistics portals, Facebook was ranked as a market leader which currently has 1.55 billion monthly active users. Instagram had over 400 million monthly active accounts. Meanwhile, Twitter had 320 million active and LinkedIn had 100 million users. YouTube is reported to have over a billion users and everyday people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views (YouTube 2016).
4 |	Social media can help companies generate brand awareness,
build a good reputation, reinforce the brand name, and increase its brand value (Edosomwan et al. 2011). Erdogmus and Cicek (2012) show that brand loyalty of the customers is positively affected when the brand appears on various platforms and offers applications on social media. Therefore, companies should understand attitudes and behaviors of consumers in order to design effective marketing communication strategies. Approximately one-third of global advertising spending is forecasted to be in digital channels by 2017. Hence, future consumer marketing will largely be carried out in digital settings, particularly social media and mobile, therefore, it is important to examine and understand consumer behavior in digital environments (Stephen 2016). Though such a social media phenomenon can now tremendously impact a company's reputation, sales, and even survival, many executives avoid or ignore this form of media because they simply do not understand what it is, the various forms it can take, and how to engage with it and learn (Kietzmann et al 2011). Nevertheless, there are many companies too that understand the importance of social media. For example, findings of the research data collected from 145 respondents working with 103 companies operating in different industries in Turkey has shown that 84% of companies reported that they currently use social media platform and 13% indicated that they are planning to use in the near future. These research findings show that Turkish companies started to realize the importance of social media (Toker et al. 2012).
The Theory of planned behavior (Ajzen 1991) has been widely applied in research in order to contribute to understanding of information technology use (Harrison et. al 1997; Venkatesh
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et al 2000). For example, member attitudes toward the virtual community predicted behavioral intention (Lin 2006). However, the impact of demographics on the relationship between attitudes towards and intention to use social media has not been addressed sufficiently. Previous research investigated how differences between groups of respondents moderate the structure of relationships. Suksa-ngiam and Chaiyasoonthorn (2015) found that the path from subjective norm to behavioural intention was moderated by age, and that this path was stronger for older people. However, the impact of demographics on attitudes-behavioral intention can vary from country to country. For example, demographic variables such as gender and age that have been reported to be important moderators of the influences of attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control on behavioral intention in other cultures were found to be non-important in Saudi Arabia (Baker et al. 2007). Kourouthanassis et al. (2015) acknowledge that the investigation of effects of individual differences such as demographics on continuance intention in an SNS website is needed. Boyd and Ellison (2007) have clearly indicated that there is a limited understanding of individual characteristics and usage purposes of social media users outside of the United States.
Turkey is one of the 43 countries that form Union for the Mediterranean which is an intergovernmental organization and has a goal to enhance regional cooperation and dialogue in the Euro-Mediterranean region. The region has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the world, therefore, union prioritizes the micro, small and medium enterprises development as a way for innovation and economic growth in the Mediterranean region (UFM 2016). The interest of Turkish people, particularly the youth, in the Internet and new social media networks has grown profoundly in the last six years (Ugurlu and Ozutku 2014). There are more than 46,1 million Internet users (Internetlivestats. com, 2016) - a figure that represents 58% of the population (Internet Users by Country 2016). Bosnia and Herzegovina has more than 2.3 million Internet users (61.6% of the population), Groatia - 3.1 million (74.2%), Slovenia - 1.4 million (72%), Albania - 1.8 million (62.8%), Morocco - 20 million (57.6%),

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Tunisia - 5.4 million (48.1%), Jordan - 3.5 million (45.7%), Egypt - 30.8 million (33%), respectively (Internet Users by Country 2016). In addition, social media usage in Turkey is 47%, Jordan - 48%, Tunisia - 42%, and Egypt - 23%. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Groatia, Slovenia, and Albania have the same social media usage level 40% (Statista, 2014). As the data shows social media usage level countries stated above is similar. These countries alongside with Turkey are emerging economies, therefore, the study findings can provide entrepreneurs new frontiers for effectively reaching their customers on social media.
The study was conducted in Turkey with Turkish consumers. The specific demographic variables considered in the present study were selected because of past research documenting their relationship to social media use. This current study aims to shed light on the role of demographics in social media use in Turkey and contribute to the social media literature and to our understanding of social media use behavior. The study is conducted within a marketing discipline. The main objective of this study is therefore to investigate the role of age, gender, education, and marital status on the relationship between individuals' attitudes towards and intention to use social media. The research was an empirical investigation based on face-to-face questionnaires conducted to a convenience sample of 706 participants in different districts in Istanbul (Turkey). In the first section of study, a problem definition is provided. The second section contains the explanation of using the demographics and the proposed conceptual model and hypotheses are then provided. The third section details methodology and results, while the last section provides a discussion of the results as well as marketing implications and future research.
PROBLEM DEFINITION
Profound changes and developments in technologies have led to the increase of social media in the last decade (Cao 2011). Social media definitions will probably continue to change as it continues to transform and its uses change and expand (Zeng and Gerritsen 2014, 28). Social media can be defined as "... a
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group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content" (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010, 61). Safko and Brake (2009, 6 ) defines social media as "activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to share information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational media. Conversational media are Web-based applications that make possible for one to create and easily transmit content in the form of words, pic- | 7 tures, videos, and audios". Zhang et. al (2015) identify seven types of social media such as collaborative projects, blogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game world, virtual social world, and mobile social media.
Ajzen's (1991) Theory of Planned Behavior was used as the theoretical basis for this study. The theory can be described as "a behavior determined by one's intentions to perform the behavior, where intention is influenced by attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control" (Pelling and White 2009, 755). The theory was used by Casalo et al. (2010) and Chang and Zhu (2011) in social media context to predict users' behavior from intention to action. However, this study does not have a purpose to test TPB, but instead to leverage this theory to expand our knowledge of factors influencing the relationship between attitudes and behavioral intention. Therefore, the relationship between attitude and behavioral intention is tested with control varibles (gender, age, education, and marital status).
There is evidence suggesting that attitudes toward social media use influence behavioral intention to use social media. Attitude can be defined as the degree to which a person has a favorable or unfavorable evaluation or appraisal of the behavior in question (Ajzen 1991). Behavioral intention explaines how hard people are willing to try and how much effort they plan to spend in order to perform a behavior that is under volitional control (Ajzen 1991). Attitudes and behavioral intention variables will be used and modified to better fit the context of the present study. Whereas attitude is defined as individuals evaluations of social media use which may be either positive or negative, behavioral intention refers to individuals' willingness to use social media.

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Positive attitudes towards social media use increases the likely-hood of individuals' intentions to use social media. Study results show that member attitudes toward the virtual community were important in predicting behavioral intention (Lin 2006; Pelling and White 2009). According to Hanson et al. (2011) many health educators are using social media and intentions to use in practice are associated with social influence and performance expectancy. Presley and Presley (2009) who investigated factors influencing student acceptance and use of academic portals, stated that a user's attitude toward using an intranet portal site positively effects the user's behavioral intention to use the site.
Trust can be defined as "the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trusted, irrespective of the ability to monitor or confront that other party" (Mayer et al 1995, 712). Chen and Sharma (2013) define trust in the context of social media as the "expectation that the social platform will act predictably, will fulfill its obligations, and will behave fairly even when the possibility of the manipulation of personal informationis present". Trust was one of the factors that influenced the intention of using social media to organise and take vacation trips (Parra-Lopez et al. 2011), to use the host firm product (Casalo et al. 2011). Trust among community members (such as trust in ability, benevolence and integrity of other members) and providing user friendly website systems was important for formating favorable member attitudes and online communication behavior (Lin 2006).
LITERATURE REVIEW
The specific demographic variables considered in the present study were selected because of past research documenting their relationship to social media use. For example, past research has documented a relationship between younger age and social media use (De Cock et al. 2014; Haight et al. 2014; Kontos et al. 2010; McAndrew and Jeong 2012), gender and social media use (Acar 2008; McAndrew and Jeong2012), education, income, marital status and race are variables that most often
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associated with demographic-based differences in social media use. However, there is a limited research which investigates the impact of demographics on the relationship between attitudes and behavioral intention to use social media. We argue that demographic factors impact the relationship between attitude and behavioral intention, therefore we investigate four variables: gender, age, education, and marital status.
The importance of gender differences in social media has been stressed in prior studies. Gender differences in the adoption and | 9 | usage of social media platforms were explored by Weiser (2000) who revealed that male users prefer to use the Internet for experiential values, whereas female users prefer to use the Internet for social and functional values. Another study findings show that while females tend to engage in more relationship maintenance, family activity, and pay attention to the self-presentation (Muscanell and Guadagno 2012), males are more likely to show their social status (Tifferet and Vilnai-Yavetz 2014). Female students were more active SNS users but they were less active on Wikis, blogs, and Internet forums compared to male students (Kim and Sin 2014). Additionaly, while females used Facebook to maintain their relationships and entertain, males used it to develop new relationships (Sheldon 2009). Shi et al (2016) found that, in general, males are more motivated by functional values to continue interaction, while females are more attracted by social and emotional values. Women are more sensitive to other's opinions to use technology (Venkatesh and Morris 2000), therefore, their attitudes towards social media use were less positive. Furthermore, women and men attribute different social presence to the same mode of communication and they may also have different perceptions of the usefulness of a medium, therefore, managers need to know how to create more favorable communications environment, one that depends not only on organizational contextual factors, but also on the gender of its users (Gefen and Straub 1997).
Previous research results show that age is a siginificant factor influencing social media use. For instance, study which investigated factors affecting the use of online social networks by active older Internet users in Slovenia found out that these individuals

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mainly use online social networks for socialising and staying in touch with their families and friends, which in turn, help them maintain existing contacts (Vosner et al. 2016). Young adults in the USA used Facebook in order to facilitate social relationships and interestingly, they did not use it to keep up with their parents or get in touch with strangers (Pempek et al. 2009). Teens, for example, used social networking sites to make new friends (Lenhart and Madden 2007). Age differences influence the way individuals use social media. For example, younger users of MySpace were using different functions of social media, having larger friend networks, and having more MySpace friends than older users (Pfeil et al. 2009). Additionally, research has found that the 18-35 age grouping made up 48% of social networking site users (Hampton et al. 2011). Barker (2009) revealed that older adolescents who reported a disconnection from their peer groups had negative collective self-esteem use social media to realize companionship.
Education is siginificant factor that may influence social media use. High school students in Turkey used Facebook for communication, entertainment, and sharing news, pictures and songs (Kaya and Bican 2016). Study investigating education level differences in the use of social media suggests graduate students are regular social media users, although they are not as active as undergraduates in terms of social media use (Park 2010). The USA undergraduate students' use of Facebook and multitasking presented a significant difference and impact on their GPA (Junco 2015). More educated users tend to pereceive the information-centric social media such as online forums to offer more connectedness utility (Chan-Olmsted et al. 2013).
Study investigating factors that influence individuals' intentions to purchase touristic products or services through social media suggests that disposition to trust seems to be more sig-nificiant than trustworthiness to explain the disposition to trust for unmarried users, while trustworthiness tends to be more relevant than disposition to trust for married users (Escobar-Rodríguez et al 2016). Also, married, educated females within the lower age ranges of older adults tended to be the ones who used social media (Hutto and Bell 2014).
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Turkey was ranked as 45 th country out of 143 economies in terms of individual social media usage (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn; 41th - among businesses use ICTs for transactions with other businesses and 53rd in businesses use of Internet for selling their goods and services to consumers (Dutta et al, 2015, p. 310, 315-316). The most popular social network in Turkey as of fourth quarter 2014 was Facebook with a 26% penetration rate, WhatsApp - 23%, Twitter -17%, Skype -13% and Linkedin - 8% (Statista 2014).	| 11 |
According to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Usage Survey on Households and Individuals (Turk Stat2015) , Internet usage of individuals aged 16-74 was 55.9%. Proportion of male that use computer and Internet were 64% and 65.8%, while these proportions were 45.6% and 46.1% for female, respectively. 69.5% of households had access to the Internet at home. In the first quarter of 2015, 80.9% of Internet users participated in social networks which was followed by reading online news, newspapers, news magazines (70.2%), seeking health-related information (66.3%), uploading self-created content to any website to be shared (62.1%) and finding information about goods and services (59.4%) (TurkStat 2015). Also, online shopping increased as 33.1% of Internet users aged 16-74 bought goods or services over the Internet for private purposes (57.4% - clothes and sports goods, 27% - travel arrangements, 25.5% - household goods, 22.4% - electronic equipment, 18.4% - books, magazines, newsin the last twelve months between April 2014 and March 2015. Interestingly, 23.2% of individuals which bought goods or services over the Internet at the same time period faced problems such as "longer speed of delivery than indicated" (47%) and "wrong or damaged goods/services delivered"(45.4%) (Turk Stat 2015).
Furthermore, according to the survey results on the 92.5% of enterprises with at least 10 persons employed used the Internet in 2015 and this proportion was 89.9% in 2014. While 65.5% of enterprises had website, 12.4% of enterprises received orders for products or services via web sites, "apps" or Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) in 2014. 38.8% of enterprises with at least 10 persons employed used social media in 2015 while this rate was
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27.7% in 2014. Social networks were the most common type of social media used by enterprises by 85.7% (Turk Stat 2015).
Research Model and Hyphoteses
Demographic variables have been found to be significantly associated with user attitudes and social media use. The conceptual model presented here was developed based on Ajzen's (1991) Theory of Planned Behavior. The model seeks to explain the impact of social media trust on attitudes towards social media use, and the impact of attitudes of social media use on the behavioral intention to use social media. This study explores the relationship beetwen trust towards social media use, attitudes towards social media use and behavioral intention to use social media while controlling for the effects of the demographic variables age, gender, education, and marital status. Demographics might influence attitudes towards and behavioral intention to use social media.
FIGURE 1: Research model
Source: The research model was developed based on Ajzen's (1991) Theory of Planned Behavior.
Based on the previous literature, the following hypotheses are put forward:
H1.There is a difference in relationship between trust towards and individuals' attitudes towards social media when age is held constant.
H2.There is a difference in relationship between trust towards and individuals' attitudes towards social media when gender is held constant.
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H3.There is a difference in relationship between trust towards and individuals' attitudes towards social media when education is held constant.
H4.There is a difference in relationship between trust towards and individuals' attitudes towards social media when marital status is held constant.
H5.There is a difference in relationship between individuals' attitudes towards social media and behavioral intention to use social media when age is held constant.
H6.There is a difference in relationship between individuals' attitudes towards social media and behavioral intention to use social media when gender is held constant.
H7.There is a difference in relationship between individuals' attitudes towards social media and behavioral intention to use social media when education is held constant.
H8.There is a difference in relationship between individuals' attitudes towards social media and behavioral intention to use social media when marital status is held constant.
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METHODOLOGY Participants
The aim of this research is to investigate the impact of demographics in relationship between trust towards social media, attitudes towards social media use and intention to use social media in Turkey in order to provide insights for marketing managers to develop effective strategies. The questionnaire was originally created in English. It was translated into Turkish and then back-translated into English by three Turkish bilingual individuals to assure that the translated version reflected the meanings of the original questionnaire. No important differences were detected after the comparison of questionnaires. Roberson and Sundstrom (1990) achieved the highest response rates in an employee attitude survey when significant questions were asked first and demographic questions were asked last. Prior to the main survey, a pre-test was instituted on 13 undergraduate
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students to refine the instrument's design and wording. After they filled out questionnaries, each statement was went over in order to address problems such as unclear questions to help participants answer questions truthfully and to the best of their knowledge. Then, same students collected 52 questionnaries in Asian side of Istanbul. Based on their feedback, minor amendments were done in order to increase clarity of the questionnaire and maximize data quality.
14 |	According to SR Levell, percentages of households with
access to the Internet in TR1 Istanbul (67.1%), TR2 West Marmara region (59.4%), TR3 Aegean region (56.9%), TR4 East Marmara region (59.2%), TR5 West Anatolia region (61.2%) were above the averages of Turkey (TurkStat, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Usage Survey in Households and Individuals, 2015). Therefore, Istanbul - the largest city in Turkey - was chosen as the research venue.
A self-administered survey allows respondents to complete a survey instrument on their own. The main advantages of self-administered questionnaires are the ability to reach large research populations, discard interviewer bias, and acquire an acceptable response rate (Haydam and Mostert 2013; Burns and Bush 2012). The low-response rate if distributed through mail or online (Bhattacherjee 2012) and difficulty to acquire large quantities of information from respondents if the questionnaire was too long (Blumberg et al. 2011) are among the disadvantages of self-administered questionnaires. In order to overcome the dissad-vantages, questionnaires were collected on a face-to-face basis. Also, each respondent was told that it will take only 15 minutes to complete a survey. Moreover, respondents were offered a pen as an incentive. In order to increase realibility self-administered questionnaries were spread at different districts with different socio-economic features on both Asian and European side of Istanbul. Participants were recruited via convenience sampling which is a form of nonprobability sampling.
The author acknowledges the following limitations to this study. First, convenience sampling was used in this study. As a non-probability sampling method it does not calculate a sampling error, therefore, stratified sampling may be needed in order
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to reduce a possible sampling error. Next, the research was conducted in Istanbul - the largest city in Turkey which is an urban center. In the future, additional studies may be needed in other parts of the country to create generalizability of the findings. In addition, self-reported data was collected by surveys used. Self-report has limitations such as individuals tendency to report what they believe the researcher expects to see or report what reflects positively on their own abilities, knowledge, beliefs, or opinions. In addition, concern about such data underlines whether subjects are able to accurately recall past behaviors (Cook and Campbell 1979).
Of the 726 completed surveys, twenty of them were found to have incomplete data and they were discarded. The resultant general population sample numbering 706 ( males, 60.3%; 30.3% females, 0.3% others) included participant aged from 17 to 69 (M= 31, SD= 10.88). 56.6% of respondents were single, 39.5% were married, 2.9% were widowed, 0.8% were divorsed. 2.7% of respondents had disabilities. While 41.4% of respondents knew foreign language, 54.5% did not know. In all, 6.9% had primary school education, 9.7% had middle school degree, 42% had high school degree, 33% had university degree, 5.7% had Master's degree and 1,4% had PhD degree. Respondents used Facebook (90.5%), Twitter (46.4%), YouTube (72.6%), and Instagram (56.2%), 10.5 % used other social media such as Linkedin, Snapchat, Periscope. The most often used social media channel was Facebook (50%), YouTube (28.2%), Twitter (12%), Instagram (5%). 52.6% of respondents used social media on PC or tablet, 13.9 % - on work computer, 1.8% - on a school computer, 89.1% - on a smartphone and 1.9% at Internet cafe. Majority of respondents used social media channels several times a day: Facebook (66.4%), Twitter 24.9%, YouTube (41.4%), Instagram (39.4%), and other social media (5.5%).
It is indicated that main purpose of using social media is to follow sharings of contacts (Facebook (84.5%), Twitter (59%), YouTube (23%), Instagram (71%)), to comment on friends' shares ((Facebook (65%), Twitter (28%), YouTube (7%), Instagram (45%)), to keep in touch ((Facebook (70%), Twitter (36%), YouTube (7%), Instagram (26%)), to upload videos and pictures

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((Facebook (57.4%), Twitter (21%), YouTube (12%), Instagram (64%)). In addition, Facebook was the most used channel to participate at events organized by others (40%), share comments on brands, products and services (23.4%) and to organize an event (30%). 12.3% of respondents had income as of "1300 TL or less", 25.6% - "1301-2000TL", 27.5% - "2001-3000TL", 11.2% - "3001-4000TL", %6.8 - "4001-5000TL", 2.6% - "5001 or more".
Measures
Trust, attitudes and behavioral intention constructs were measured by using a 5-point Likert scale, with options ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Most of the measurement items were adapted from previous research with small modifications to fit the research context. The items measuring attitude and behavioral intention to use social media were adapted from Taylor and Todd (1995). The items measuring trust were adapted from Mital et. al (2010). Four questions measured Trust (I think that it is safe to exchange information on social media sites; I think that the exchange of information on social media sites is truthful; I think that information is dependable enough for me to make a decision; I trust other persons on social media sites), 3 questions measured attitudes (bad/good, unpleasant/ pleasant, not satisfactory/satisfactory). Respondents were asked how likely are you to use the social media and networking sites within the next 12 months (very likely; somewhat likely; neither likely nor unlikely, somewhat unlikely, very unlikely) in order to measure behavioral intention to use social media.
DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
The quality of the data sample was assesed and evaluated for common biases and errors. The data were analyzed using multiple regression analyses. The reliability of the constructs were evaluated before they were used in the regression analysis. Cronbach's Alpha was used to assess the construct reliabilities. The scales used in this study reflected reasonable reliability scores based on Cronbach's Alpha coefficients such as 0.76
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for attitudes, 0.75 for behavioral intention and 0.66 for trust. Though the "generally agreed" lower limit for acceptable reliability is 0.70 (Nunnally 1967), Hair et al. (2006) proposed that it may decrease to 0.60 and still be acceptable, especially in exploratory studies and in research in the Social Sciences. These results indicate that the scales provided adequate measurement properties and were appropriate for further analyses. The study explored the relationship beetwen trust towards social media, attitudes towards social media use and behavioral intention | 17 to use social media while controlling for the effects of the demographic variables such as age, gender, education, and marital status.
TABLE 1: Multiple Regression Analysis: Results of testing the relationship between trust and attitude with control variables (gender, age, education, and marital status)
Model				Standardized Coefficients	E-1	tg • iH C/3	Collinearity Statistics	
		Pi	R square	Beta			Tolerance	VIF
1	(Constant)	0.27a	0.07		25.410	.000		
	Trust			.273	6.449	.000	1.000	1.000
2	(Constant)	0.32b	0.10		14.263	.000		
	Trust			.272	6.428	.000	.974	1.027
	Age			-.158	-3.156	.002	.696	1.436
	Gender			.077	1.777	.076	.934	1.071
	Education			.084	1.813	.070	.808	1.238
	Maritalstatus			-.013	-.264	.792	.706	1.417
a.	Predictors: (Constant), TRST
b.	Predictors: (Constant), TRST, Age, Gender, Education, Marital status
c.	Dependent Variable: ATTDS

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A multiple regression was conducted to examine if IV1 predicted DV while controlling for the effects of the aforementioned demographic variables. Using the 2-step enter method it was found that IV1 explain a significant amount of the variance in the value of DV (p = .000, R2 = .10).The effect of age on the trust-attitude relationship was significant at p < 0.05 (B = -.158; t = -3.156; p <0.002). As age increases, the relationship between trust and attitude gets weaker. Most probably, as age increases, other factors alongside with trust (f.e purpose of use) can be related to attitude. In contrast, gender (B = 0.77; t = 1.77; p > 0.07), education (B = 0.08; t = 1.81; p > 0.70), marital status (B = -0.01; t = -0.26; p > 0.79) did not explain the variance the relationship between trust and attitude. Hence, only age explained a significant amount of the variance in the value of DV.
TABLE 2: Multiple Regression Analysis: Results of testing the relationship between attitude and behavioral intention with control variables (gender, age, education, and marital status)
Model				Standardized Coefficients	E-1	m	Collinearity Statistics	
		Pi	R square	Beta			Tolerance	VIF
1	(Constant)	0.25a	0.06		10.672	.000		
	Attds			.258	6.346	.000	1.000	1.000
2	(Constant)	0.39b	0.15		8.148	.000		
	Attds			.216	5.442	.000	.965	1.036
	Age			-.203	-4.279	.000	.674	1.483
	Gender			.043	1.073	.284	.942	1.062
	Education			.154	3.534	.000	.800	1.249
	Maritalstatus			.023	.493	.622	.692	1.445
a.	Predictors: (Constant), ATTDS
b.	Predictors: (Constant), ATTDS, Age, Education, Gender, Marital status
c.	Dependent Variable: BI2
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A multiple regression was conducted to examine if IV1 predicted DV while controlling for the effects of the aforementioned demographic variables . Using the 2-step enter method it was found that IV1 explain a significant amount of the variance in the value of DV (p = .000, R2 = .15). Attitude towards social media use predicted behavioral intention to use social media. Gender at p < 0.05 (B = 0.04; t = 1.07; p > 0.28) and marital status (B = 0.23; t = 0.49; p > 0.62) effect on the attitude - behavioral relationship was non-significant. In contrast, age negatively influenced the relationship between attitude and behavioral intention (B = - 0.20; t = - 4.27; p < 0.000). As age increases, the relationship between attitude and behavioral intention gets weaker. Education (B = 0.15; t = 3.53; p <0.000) explained the variance of the relationship between attitude towards social media use and behavioral intention to use social media. As education level increases, the relationship between attitude and behavioral intention gets stronger.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Social media provide individuals an opportunity to communicate with high number of individuals simultaneously. They share their opinions, thoughts, experiences related to events, products and services. Therefore, social media companies, advertisers, and marketers should understand factors influencing consumers' attitudes and behavioral intentions towards social media use in order to design effective marketing communication strategies. The main objective of this study was to investigate the role of demographics such as age, gender, education, and marital status on the relationship between trust, individuals' attitudes towards and intention to use social media. The effect of age on the trust-attitude relationship and the effect of age and edcuation on the attitude-behavioral intention relationship is significant, whereas gender and marital status effect relationship was proved to be non-significant.
Trust towards social media is positively related to attitudes towards social media use and age was only variable among control variables influencing this relationship. As age increases,
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the relationship between trust and attitude gets weaker. One possible explanation may be that as age increases, other factors alongside with trust (f.e. purpose of use, cost of use, time and energy constraints) can be related to attitude. This finding is consistent with previous research which highlights the fact that age plays a large role in determining the likelihood of Facebook use, and that the lack of access, perceived security and privacy issues, cost and perceived complexity of the technology each contribute to why some seniors do not use social media applications (Hutto and Bell 2014; Porter and Donthu 2006). The intensity of the relationship between trust and attitudes was higher for younger individuals. This finding is consistent with previous research that states that youngsters are likely to disclose more information on social networks than adults and use the networks' privacy protection tools less than older people (Christofides et al. 2012). In addition, Turkish high school students were found to know how to control their privacy settings, be conscious about their privacy, and do not make public shares in order to receive more likes (Kaya and Bicen 2016). Basically, seniors do not trust social media. Older individuals can be educated regarding the usefulness of social media, which in turn may lead to the formation of positive attitudes towards social media. For example, Profilo, one of Turkish companies producing household appliances, produced advertising campaigns for mothers that explain "TBT", "mention" and "retweet" concepts in a very simple manner. Such a strategy may reduce concerns of older people regarding the hardness of using social media and by doing so, lead to trust formation which can lead to positive attitudes towards social media use.
Attitudes towards social media use were positively related to behavioral intention to use social media and control variables such as age and education influenced this relationship which is in accordance with the previous research findings (Barker 2012; Correa et al. 2010). The intensity of the relationship between attitudes and behavioral intention is higher for both young and educated customers. This finding in congruence with the information provided by TurkStat, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Usage Survey in Households and Individuals
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(2015), according to which 75% of the frequent users were aged less than 34, only less than 10% of the higher age group indicated that they use the Internet communication frequently. Finally, almost 94% of the highly educated individuals but less than 50% less educated individuals reported to use frequent Internet communication. These statistics presented in this report show a clear pattern of heavy Internet communication usage by the younger and highly educated consumer groups in Turkey.
Previous research highlights that positive influence of usefulness on continued intention to use social media indicates that users' continued intention to use social media increases when the user believes that social media improves the efficiency of their information sharing, connecting with others, or provides them an opportunity to know more people (Kwon and Wen 2010). As age increases, social network size decreases (Brandtzaeg 2012; Pfeil et al. 2009). That is, younger individuals use many different types of social media rather than older ones. Positive attitudes towards social media use increases the likelihood of individuals' intentions to use social media. Social media marketers should take into consideration demographic factors to form positive attitudes towards social media and stimulate behavioral intention to use social media in order to succeed in the market.
Social media reshaped the way how businesses communicate with their customers. Consumers are becoming more pover-ful in social media and more demanding, therefore, companies should be agile enough to adopt new strategies in responding to customer preferences (Kohli et al. 2015) and design strategic plans and implement tools to improve the performance of social media. Social media can provide great opportunity to companies to build strong relationships with their customers. Research demonstrates that the social media represent a potential vehicle to help small companies create better brand awareness, better relationships with customers, and increase sales via these mechanisms (Jones et al. 2015). Especially, micro and small enterp-rizes which are lack of abundant financial resources can use social networking tools to promote their products and services and interact with their customers. The results of the study show that

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different demographic segments have different effects on social media use. Companies can develop different strategies that will led to the formation of positive attitudes towards social media and reinforce behavioral intention to use social media for different demographic segments. For example, companies should spend more efforts toward females and older individuals that have less intention to use social media. Social media companies, advertisers or marketers may convince older ones regarding the ease of use and usefulness of social media channels and foster positive word-of mouth communication among them by encouraging to share their experiences. Also, Facebook was the most used channel to participate at events organized by others, share comments on brands, products and services and to organize an event, therefore, companies can focus on this social media channel in order to stay connected to their customers by interacting with them , listening to them, and solving their problems as soon as they evolve.
Social media can be used as one of the important customer touchpoints which will help companies to contact the complaining customer as quickly as possible and resolve the complaint. Such a quick respond will maximize customer satisfaction and lead to customer loyalty. Overall, social media provides multiple benefits to companies; besides nourishing brand building and company image, social media can support collaborative communication between current and potential customers, acquiring their feedback, and delivering customer service and support (Basu 2015). Not only large companies can get the benefits of incorporating of social media in their marketing activities, but at the same time entrepreneurs and small and medium sized enterprizes can benefit as a result of low cost. Small and medium sized companies significantly contribute to the economy of Turkey and social media use may help those companies to prosper by effectively reaching their customers. Moreover, social media can contribute to the socio-economic empowerment of women and enhance employment opportunities which are among priorities of Turkey and other emerging economies in the Euro-Mediterranean region.
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TABLE 3: Results Summary
H	There is a difference in relationship between trust towards and individuals' attitudes towards social media when age is held constant.	Confirmed
H2	There is a difference in relationship between trust towards and individuals' attitudes towards social media when gender is held constant.	Declined
H3	There is a difference in relationship between trust towards and individuals' attitudes towards social media when education is held constant.	Declined
H4	There is a difference in relationship between trust towards and individuals' attitudes towards social media when marital status is held constant.	Declined
H5	There is a difference in relationship between individuals' attitudes towards social media and behavioral intention to use social media when age is held constant.	Confirmed
H6	There is a difference in relationship between individuals' attitudes towards social media and behavioral intention to use social media when gender is held constant.	Declined
H7	There is a difference in relationship between individuals' attitudes towards social media and behavioral intention to use social media when education is held constant.	Confirmed
H8	There is a difference in relationship between individuals' attitudes towards social media and behavioral intention to use social media when marital status is held constant.	Declined
Future research may consider conducting a longitudinal study that will deal with revealing additional factors that might have influenced attitudes and behavioral intentions of individuals. Furthermore, the study can be conducted in other emerging economies in the Euro-Mediterranean region. A host of other factors influencing attitudes and behavioral intention to use social media should be considered in future research. For example, studies may investigate personal charachteristics, interests, and activities of individuals as factors influencing intention to use social media. The understanding of the role of different factors would also provide useful insights to companies.
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