Social media environments effect on perceived interactivity: An empirical investigation from WeChat moments

The purpose of this paper is to treat WeChat moments as social media environments and applies the research model to explore the effect of social media environments on perceived interactivity from the perspective of environmental psychology.

This paper proposes social media environments as effective stimuli for future participate in online social interactions. First, two cues of social media environments (user-to-system cues and user-to-user cues) can be important antecedents of users’ perception of interactivity. Second, users’ intention of future participates in online social interactions can be influenced by three dimensions of perceived interactivity (action control, connectedness and responsiveness). Using data from 334 users of WeChat moments, the authors conduct partial least squares analysis to validate the research model.

The results indicate that both technological and social environments positively affect three dimensions of perceived interactivity, respectively, including action control, connectedness and responsiveness. Moreover, actual findings also suggest that higher perceived interactivity increases users’ intention of future participate in online social interactions.

This work contributes to in-depth research on the relationships between social environments and perceived interactivity. Besides, this paper demonstrates that both technological and social cues of social media environments are significant elements in simulating users’ internal experience and behavioral intention. The main conclusions of this study can be valuable to social media developers and managers.