Why people use social networking sites passively. An empirical study integrating impression management concern, privacy concern, and SNS fatigue
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-12-2017-0270 |
| Pages | 158-175 |
| Date | 19 March 2018 |
| Published date | 19 March 2018 |
| Author | Xinhua Zhu,Zheshi Bao |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
Why people use social networking
sites passively
An empirical study integrating impression
management concern, privacy concern, and
SNS fatigue
Xinhua Zhu
School of Public Administration, Hohai University, Nanjing, China, and
Zheshi Bao
Business School, Hohai University, Nanjing, China
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to explore the underlying mechanism of how passive social
networking site (SNS) use happens from aspects of impression management concern, privacy concern, and
SNS fatigue, and then examine whether sense of membership can work as a moderator in this process.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors proposed a research model by integrating impression
management concern, privacy concern, and SNS fatigue. A total of 301 valid online questionnaires were
collected, and these data were assessed by PLS-SEM.
Findings –The results show that both impression management concern and privacy concern have direct
and positive effects on passive SNS use, and meanwhile they can also indirectly and positively affect passive
SNS use through SNS fatigue. Besides, the relationships between impression management concern and its
outcomes (SNS fatigue and passive SNS use) can be moderated by sense of membership.
Originality/value –This research is novel in focusing on the formation of passive SNS use and providing new
insight into some factors which can trigger users’passive behaviors in SNS usage. The findings will contribute to
SNS literature by offering a well proven conceptual model that facilitates the understanding of passive SNS use.
Keywords Privacy concern, SNS fatigue, SNS, Impression management concern, Passive SNS use,
Sense of membership
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
As social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook and Twitter have become part of
people’s daily communications, more and more individuals rely on SNSs to keep in touch
with others. These online platforms have played an important role in establishing and
maintaining relationships (Grieve et al., 2013). Previous researchers have pointed out that in
the context of SNS, not all patterns of usage behaviors are active (Pagani et al., 2011). There
exist a variety of users who are very quiet on SNSs. They consume information
(e.g. scrolling through news feeds, viewing others’posts) from SNSs, but seldom post status
updates, comment on others’posts, share photos or click “liking”(Verduyn et al., 2015).
This pattern of usage is usually called passive SNS use.
In recent years, some studies have tried to explorethisspecificpatternofSNSuse.For
example, Shaw et al. (2015) examined the relationship between social anxiety symptoms and
different Facebook usage patterns. They found that users who passively use Facebook would
suffer social anxiety symptoms. Verduyn et al. (2015) employed experimental and field methods
to reveal that passive SNS use would lead to a decline in affective well-being because of
increasing envy. Moreover, Chen et al. (2016) indicated the negative relationship between passive
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 70 No. 2, 2018
pp. 158-175
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-12-2017-0270
Received 5 December 2017
Revised 24 January 2018
2 March 2018
Accepted 12 March 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (91747208), the MOE
(Ministry of Education in China) Liberal arts and Social Sciences Foundation (17YJA630149), and the
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2015B23514; 2016B46814).
158
AJIM
70,2
SNS use and subjective well-being. A moderated mediation model was built to prove that
passive SNS use would be indirectly related to subjective well-being through self-esteem. It is
commonly found that these studies mainly focus on the consequences of passive SNS use, but
seldom discussed why some individuals use SNSs passively or how this phenomenon is formed.
To a certain extent, benefits or drawbacks acquired by users are related to different patterns of
SNS use (Burke et al., 2010; Young et al., 2017). Passive SNS use has been proved to cause some
negative outcomes such as low subjective well-being and social anxiety symptoms, and to avoid
these negative experiences, exploring the determinants of passive SNS use is necessary.
As revealed in priorliterature, privacy concerns havenegative effects on SNS users’online
interactions and self-disclosure intentions, which may lead to a decline in active usage
behaviors (Lin and Liu, 2012). But on the other hand, although privacy risk has become a
serious problem, theuser base of SNS is constantly expanding. To explainthis phenomenon,
Min and Kim (2015) used the cost-benefit framework suggesting privacy concerns as cost
factors and behavior enticements as benefit factors. They examined how the enticements
operated against privacy concerns in users’cost-benefit calculus regarding using SNS
continuously.Therefore, privacy concern can be considered as an important factor regarding
how people behav e on SNSs, and it is necessary to f urther explore the role of it i n SNS usage.
Besides that, people are also concerned about their impressions when they are in public
(Leary and Kowalski, 1990). SNSs are open platforms connected with multiple audiences
simultaneously. Oh and LaRose (2016) have pointed out that the more public one’s behavior,
the more likely one is to be concerned about how behavior appears to others, and the more
motivated one will be to manage one’s impression. Therefore, individuals are usually
motivated to use some impression management strategies to keep self-images
(Lin et al., 2014). These strategies may lead to some special behaviors of SNS usage.
Additionally, Ravindran et al. (2014) argued that SNS users would alter their behaviors to
avoid social network fatigue. In other words, they usually show a behavioral tendency to
limit participations when they felt overwhelmed (Bright et al., 2015). Therefore, in the
context of SNS, active usage behaviors are likely to be declined because of fatigue. Finally,
a strong sense of membership with a community is the key determinant of the community’s
cohesion. SNS users are more likely to be friends with and interact with people who are in
close relationships or share the same identity (Hebl et al., 2012). Among these members,
higher levels of trust and familiaritycould be easily created, which may mitigate individuals’
concerns and promote participation (Cremer and Vugt, 1999; Koh and Kim., 2004), and then
some active SNS use behaviors may be produced. Based on these motivations, the current
study explores how passive SNS use can be influenced from aspects of privacy concern,
impression management concern, and SNS fatigue as well as sense of membership.
Theremainderofthispaperisarrangedasfollows. In Section 2, the theoretical background
of this research is provided, and based on it, hypotheses and research model are presented.
Section3indicatestheresearchmethodologyofthisstudy,followedbyatestmode,data
analysis and results in Section 4. Then in Section 5, the findings of study are discussed. Finally,
we conclude the research with theoretical implications, practical implications, and limitations.
2. Theoretical background and hypotheses
2.1 Passive SNS use
Prior studies have revealed that SNS use can be divided into two forms: active and passive
(Deters and Mehl, 2013). Active SNS use refers to participations that facilitate direct
communications with others, such as posting status updates, sharing experiences,
or commenting on others’posts; on the contrary, passive SNS use means browsing and
consuming information without commentsor any attempts to provide direct communications
with others (Verduynet al., 2015). In other words, the most obvious difference between active
and passive SNS use is having or not having direct communications with other users.
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