The impact of users’ sense of belonging on social media habit formation: Empirical evidence from social networking and microblogging websites in China

Highlights

• A research model is developed to explain the formation of social media usage habit.

• Sense of belonging positively influences the strength of usage habit.

• Sense of belonging attenuates the effect of frequency of past behavior on usage habit.

• Social media usage habit is positively associated with continuance intention.

Abstract

Continued usage is critical to the success of social media applications. Although usage tends to become routine, little is known about the development of these habits, particularly with regard to users’ sense of belonging. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of habit formation, we propose a conceptual model that introduces users’ sense of belonging to explore the formation of usage habit from an affective perspective. The empirical results (for two samples of 594 social network users and 608 microbloggers in China) suggest that sense of belonging positively influences the strength of usage habit. In addition, sense of belonging attenuates the effect of frequency of past behavior on usage habit. These findings offer rich insights for understanding how and why social media usage habit arises. The implications for both theory and practice are discussed.

Introduction

Continued use of social media is a critical step toward a platform’s success (Bhattacherjee, 2001). Social media usage tend to become habitual over time (Lee, 2014; Ouellette & Wood, 1998). Just like rising each morning and going to bed every night, eating and drinking, or working to satisfy our needs in our daily lives, social media usage can become automatic because they occur without a person’s awareness (Verplanken, 2006). As indicated above, usage habit has the potential to push users to continue using social media (Limayem, Hirt, Christy, & Cheung, 2007). Therefore, cultivating usage habit has become a real concern for social media applications.

There are two main explanations for how an information systems (IS) usage habit is formed. One is the instant activation perspective (IAP) and the other is the habit/automaticity perspective (HAP) (Barnes, 2011; Kim, Malhotra, & Narasimhan, 2005). Proponents of the IAP argue that automatic processing is an accelerated type of conscious processing where goals are effortlessly retrieved (Ajzen, 2002). Previous studies based on the IAP have suggested relationships between goal-directed factors and habits, such as perceived usefulness (Barnes, 2011), enjoyment (Barnes, 2011; Song & Zhang, 2011) and satisfaction (Chiu, Hsu, First, Lai, & Chang, 2012; Limayem et al., 2007). In contrast, advocates of the HAP argue that repetition of the same behavior over time creates a set of mental links that are hardwired, linking situational cues and behavior (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2000). As a result, habitual IS usage occurs without the process of establishing associated goals (Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar, & Trotschel, 2001; Kim et al., 2005).

Based on the IAP and the HAP, repetition was recognized as one of the most significant mechanisms that promoted an individual’s IS habit (Barnes, 2011; Lankton, Wilson, & Mao, 2010; Limayem et al., 2007; Ray & Seo, 2013). Although previous literature mostly assumed that the positive relationship between repetition and automaticity was linear, Lally, Jaarsveld, Potts, and Wardle (2010) found that the relationship between the two constructs may have an asymptotic curve. Specifically, early repetitions result in larger increases in automaticity than those later in the habit formation process, and there is a point at which the behavior could not become more automatic – even with further repetition. In other words, after habit formation, repetition is no longer the primary factor affecting automaticity.

Given the inconsistent research findings in the previous literature, the aim of the present study is to investigate the significant antecedents of individuals’ habits from an affective theoretical perspective and to clarify the repetition mechanism of habit formation in the new research context of social media usage. Psychological research suggests that belonging is an internal affective or evaluative feeling or perception (Hageyrty, Lynch-Sauer, Patusky, Bouwsema, & Collier, 1992). In the context of social media usage, sense of belonging is recognized as an affective factor that influences users’ attitudes, stickiness and subsequent usage behaviors (Hsu & Liao, 2014; Lin, Fan, & Chau, 2014). Users’ sense of belonging reinforces the need to choose the same behavior when facing the same situation the next time and thus makes the recurrence of usage behavior more likely. The recurrence of the usage triggered by sense of belonging may progressively increase the automaticity of behavior (Verplanken, 2006).

Based on the above discussion, we introduce users’ sense of belonging within the social media community as a significant affective antecedent of usage habit and continuance behavior. Then we examine the interaction effect between sense of belonging and frequency of past behavior in the formation of usage habit. More specifically, we focus on the following two research questions: 1) How does a user’s sense of belonging within the social media community influence the formation of usage habit? 2) What is the interaction effect between a user’s sense of belonging and frequency of past behavior on social media usage habit?

This study offers a number of theoretical contributions. Our research appears to be the first effort to explore the antecedents of social media usage habit from an affective theoretical perspective, which can further extend our understanding of the formation of IS usage habit. Unlike the IAP and HAP, we argue that an affective perspective of habit formation can show whether social media usage habit is an automatic behavioral tendency driven by a user’s sense of belonging. This study also contributes by applying the affective perspective to extend the reinforcement mechanism of habit formation. We suggest an alternative view of the reinforcement mechanism whereby a user’s sense of belonging as a key affective factor leading to his or her enhanced tendency to repeat the behavior in a social media application. In addition, our study suggests that sense of belonging attenuates the effect of frequency of past behavior on social media usage habit. In essence, there is a tradeoff between sense of belonging and the frequency of past behavior in the process of usage habit formation. The empirical research findings can fill in a gap by unpacking the impact mechanism of sense of belonging on usage habit in the context of social medial usage.

This paper is organized in the following way: In the next section, we review the related literature and theoretical foundations for our research model. Then we conceptualize our research model and propose our hypotheses. In the subsequent section, we present our methodology and the results of our data analyses. Finally, we discuss the implications of our research findings, identify the limitations of the study and suggest potential directions for future research.