2. Literature Review
2.4. Engagement
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narcissism, motives and behavioral outcomes of Instagram use. Gender was found to be the strongest predictor of the amount of time spent on Instagram, followed by the surveillance motive, the creativity motive, and life satisfaction. The study hence made an important contribution to understanding which contextual age indicators can best predict how and why a person chooses to create an Instagram account, and the findings revealed that social activity emerged as one of the most important predictors of why people use Instagram, yet life satisfaction negatively predicted the use of Instagram to appear cool. Furthermore, it is also reported that Instagram is appealing to narcissists, which suggests that narcissism is one of the essential psychological traits observed in Instagram use.
While there have been several U&G studies examining the motivational dimensions of image-sharing social media usage (Mull & Lee, 2014; Punyanunt-Carter et al., 2017), and Instagram usage (Lee et al., 2015; Sheldon & Bryant, 2016), there have not been empirical efforts devoted to examine users’ motivations to engage in Instagram Stories. Given that each type of media has specific uses and
gratifications, it is important for researchers to further understand distinctive user motivations for using popular features within Instagram. Thus, the present research utilizes U&G as the theoretical approach to explore the motives behind the major users (i.e., Millennials) of Instagram Stories (Instagram, 2017), and put forth the following research question.
RQ1: What are Millennials’ motivations for using Instagram Stories?
2.4. Engagement
2.4.1. Conceptualization of Engagement
In response to the dynamic and interactive nature of communication evolved on social media, researchers and practitioners alike (Calder, Malthouse, & Schaedel, 2009; Higgins & Scholer, 2009; Owyang, 2007; Vivek, Beatty, & Morgan, 2012) have tried to gain deeper insights into how and why the audience engage with social media, what engagement entails, and its effects on communication outcomes.
Engagement, originated as a psychological concept, has also been broadly used in various fields including sociology, communication, organizational behavior, education, political science, and more (Hollebeek, 2011; Kuvykaitė & Tarutė, 2015).
The concept is generally utilized in discussions regarding how individuals involve in
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processes, co-creation, solution development and/or utilization, interactions and/or marketing-related forms of service exchange (Brodie, Hollebeek, Juric, & Ilic, 2011).
It may be used to determine the degree of “connection,” “attachment,” “emotional involvement,” and/or “participation” (London, Downey, & Mace, 2007), yet the notion of engagement has been conceptualized variously and diversely in the literature.
Broadly, Calder and Malthouse (2008) proposed that engagement represents a sense of involvement and connectedness with the media channel itself. Hollebeek (2011) further explained that engagement is strongly oriented to the context and can be influenced by users’ decisions associated with specific engagement objects, such as brands, products, or organizations, and regarded engagement as a multidimensional concept that comprises three dimensions: cognitive (thoughts), emotional (feelings), and behavioral (actions). Along that logic, cognitive engagement dimension is defined as a user’s degree of thought processing, concentration and interest in specific
interactions; emotional dimension, also labeled as “affection,” refers to a user’s state of emotional activity in certain interactions; while behavioral dimension, known as
“activation,” is a user’s levels of energy, endeavor and time spent on particular interactions (Hollebeek, 2011; Hollebeek, Glynn, & Brodie, 2014).
Notionally, Brodie et al. (2011) defined engagement as a temporary state occurring within broader relevant engagement processes developed overtime. While Lorena, Blanca, and Julio (2013) perceived engagement as a reflection of positive reaction of using technologies, which is usually suggested by intrinsic interest,
curiosity, focused attention, concentration and absorption in a task, Patterson, Yu, and De Ruyter (2006) classified four main dimensions of engagement, including
absorption, dedication, vigor, and interaction, and argued that users are enthusiastic and determined to devote energy, concentrate on and interact with a focal engagement object. Vivek (2009) identified five engagement components, comprising awareness, enthusiasm, interaction, activity, and extraordinary experience.
Although diverse definitions of engagement emerged in the literature due to different contexts in which it occurs and being analyzed (Brodie et al., 2011), the extant research has used engagement to describe individuals’ interactive experience with focal objects such as products, services, media, activities, and so on. By
interacting with each other through online communication and participation formats,
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people are able to engage in dialogues through interactive media and content they themselves create (Creamer, 2006); thus, engagement of social media platforms at different intensities should be a key consideration. Considering the intensity of engagement depends on highly the contextual conditions, such as the type of media (e.g., social networks), situational variables (e.g., advertising), and involved subjects (e.g., brand communities) (Brodie et al., 2011), the thesis would put more focus on specific focal object of engagement— users’ interactions with content— in a social media context.
2.4.2. Social Media Engagement
In the era of digital and social media, users’ attention has been shifting from the mass media to social media, and they tend to spend a lot of time engaging with content on social media (Carton, 2011), which lead to marketers’ increasing investment in social media to connect with users.
Chaffey (2007) depicted that engagement increases when users have repeated interactions with brands that can strengthen their emotional, psychological or physical investment. Owyang (2007) proposed that online engagement indicates the level of authentic involvement, intensity, contribution, ownership, which are considered
“apparent interest.” Engagement thus encompasses attention, interaction, velocity, authority, and relevant attributes. For example, people can read, comment, or subscribe on blogs as well as poking, sharing, or friending on Facebook. Likewise, Peterson (2007) defined online engagement as an estimate of the degree and depth of visitor interaction on the site, measured against a clearly defined set of goals. Due to the uniqueness of each organization’s version of engagement, a number of root
metrics have been performed, including frequency, recency, length of visit, purchases, and lifetime value. Both Owyang (2007) and Peterson (2007) drew attention to
different levels and intensity of online engagement, which is in line with the notion that engagement levels represent a specific state at different stages of relationships between organizations and users (Hollebeek, 2011). However, while previous researchers employed different approaches to determine the levels and types of
engagement, there is general consensus in the literature that there are varying levels of engagement (Malthouse, Haenlein, Skiera, Wege, & Zhang, 2013). By elaborating engagement from a behavioral perspective, Van Doorn, Lemon, Mittal, Nass, Pick,
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Pirner, and Verhoef (2010) further defined social media engagement behavior as “a customer’s behavioral manifestations that have a social media focus beyond purchase, resulting from motivational drivers” (p. 254), which is central to the conceptualization of engagement in the current study.
Building on the U& G theory, Shao (2009) identified three types of individuals’
engagement with content: consumption (i.e., viewing, reading, watching), participation (i.e., commenting, sharing, liking, disliking), and production (i.e., creating, publishing), arguing that individuals use user-generated media in different ways for different purposes. The findings showed that individuals consume content to fulfill their needs for information, entertainment, and manage their mood, participate through interacting with the content as well as with other users to enhance social connections and the sense of being a part of virtual communities, and produce their own content for self-expression and self-actualization, both of which may ultimately achieve constructing their identity. Also, the researcher argued that, it is “easy to use”
and “let users control” (Shao, 2009, p. 7) as two usability aspects of user-generated media that allow individuals to consume, participate, and/or produce in a highly efficient and controllable way, which makes individuals obtain greater gratification from using user-generated media.
Morrison, Cheong, and McMillan (2013) presented a classification of participants who create user-generated content, including posters, lurkers, and networkers, and explored their demographics, personality types, and key user
characteristics. While lurkers are people who simply read the content posted by others and posters are those who post online content at user-generated media sites,
networkers are those who engage in producing and consuming user-generated content on SNSs. The researchers revealed that lurkers are a lot more prevalent than posters in the online environment. Demographically, lurkers, posters, and networkers do not differ in terms of ethnicity, education, or household, yet age, gender, and employment status were proven to be factors related to behaviors in the context of user-generated content.
In particular, Muntinga, Moorman, and Smit (2011) proposed the typology of consumers’ online brand-related activities (COBRAs) and categorized COBRAs into three continuous levels of gradual involvement with social media content: consuming (i.e., participating without actively contributing or creating content), contributing (i.e.,
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user-to-content and user-to-user interactions) and creating (i.e., actively producing and publishing the content that others consume and contribute to). To gain insights into why users engage in COBRAs, the researchers followed the U&G approach and discovered six motivations behind users’ engagement in SNS communities:
information, entertainment, remuneration, personal identity and integration, social interaction, and empowerment. Specifically, they found that consuming content is driven by the need for information and remuneration, creating content is linked to empowerment motivation, and both contributing to communities and creating content are associated with social interaction and self-presentation, whereas the need for entertainment is related to all types of engagement in COBRAs.
Following Muntinga et al.’s (2011) framework of social media use motivations as antecedents of engagement, De Veirman, Cauberghe, Hudders, and De Pelsmacker (2017) examined the characteristics and marketing potential of SNS brand
communities, how SNS users interact with the communities, and what motivates them to engage in different types of interaction. As the development of the Internet
facilitates the creation of virtual communities, such as pages on Facebook or accounts on Twitter or Instagram, individuals are allowed to join a page and help spread
information by simply clicking “Like,” “Share,” “Retweet,” or “Comment” on posts on SNSs. In most cases, they engage in SNSs by lurking (i.e., non-interactive behavior that they passively, not publicly view pages and read posts from others as they browse). In some cases, they engage in SNSs by posting (i.e., interactive
behavior that they publicly like and share posts, add content themselves, and/or react to comments of others). Via surveying on Facebook, the researchers found that both lurking and posting are driven by the need for social interaction. While lurking is motivated by the need for entertainment, posting is reported to be strongly related to the empowerment motivation, which may indicate that users actively engage in online activities to have an impact on others. Given the contextual differences, the motives for engaging in SNS activities should be further explored.
Based on the reviewed literature, social media use motivations are determinants of engagement. In particular, viewing, participating and uploading content are observed to be the main activities that individuals engage on social media (Morrison et al., 2013; Muntinga et al., 2011; Shao, 2009; Tsai & Men, 2013). In view of the Instagram Stories context, this study conceptualizes engagement by integrating
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the typology of engagement proposed by Muntinga et al. (2011), exploring the relationships between motivations of Instagram Stories usage and types of engagement: consuming (i.e., viewing, browsing, checking out, and swiping up Instagram Stories), contributing (i.e., participating in activities, replying to Instagram Stories), and creating (i.e., posting and uploading Instagram Stories). Considering that there is not much literature on users’ engagement with Instagram Stories, the
following research question asks how different motivations contribute to Millennials’
engagement levels with Instagram Stories, aiming to elucidate the nature of their content consuming, contributing, and creating behaviors.
RQ2: How are Millennials’ motivations for using Instagram Stories related to their engagement in terms of content consumption, contribution, and creation?
2.5. Psychological Consequences of Social Media Engagement