The Role of Facebook Use With Home and Host Country Relations in Sojourner’s and Expatriate’s Adaptation to the Netherlands

Over the years, a lot of research has been done in the field of intercultural or cross-cultural adaptation, especially in relation to sojourners or expatriates. In fact, various studies focused on a variety of factors relating to sojourners’/ expatriates’ well-being and well-doing in life in regard to work and business assignments/ study or exchange program. The more recent studies in this field also took into account the internet and social media, that offers certain opportunities for acculturating and adapting to a new country, for instance, by making it easier to stay in touch with family and friends from home or build new relationships in the new environment. The present study picks up on that by researching the question whether Facebook use is helping or hindering the process of acculturation/ adaptation that sojourners and expatriates have to get through. In fact, it digs deeper by dividing Facebook use into two categories. One being Facebook use with home country relations and the other Facebook use with host country relations. The study was executed in form of a survey with 147 non-Dutch respondents who either work or study in the Netherlands. On the basis of this quantitative approach, data was collected and then analyzed with IBM SPSS 24. Bridging the existing knowledge gap between intercultural adaptation studies and social media studies, this study’s findings were able to provide new insights. The results, for instance, indicate that Facebook use with host country relations in particular does have a significant relation with other factors of acculturation and adaption, such as contact and participation and psychological adaptation. Furthermore, it has been found that the emotional well-being of sojourners/ expatriates does have a significance relation to adaptive outcomes such as satisfaction with life, satisfaction with job/ study and intention to leave.