Unveiling the Dynamics: Exploring User Affective and Behavioral Responses to Social Media

Abstract

Social media has outperformed traditional media as a source of interpersonal and masspersonal communication tools. The extant literature offers valuable knowledge on the positive and (or) negative attributes of social media and their ultimate effects on users’ affective and behavioral responses. However, it is unclear how the positive and negative attributes of social media affect users’ responses simultaneously. Drawing on the newly proposed social media demands and resources (SMD-R) model, the present study examined the positive and negative attributes of social media on the affective outcomes of social media fatigue (hereafter SM fatigue) and SM engagement (hereafter SM engagement) and behavioral outcomes of users in a single integrated framework. Data were gathered from 235 social media users in the Republic of Korea (hereafter Korea) to test the proposed framework. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was conducted, and the results showed that SM demands positively related to SM fatigue and negatively related to SM engagement. SM resources positively related to SM engagement and did not affect SM fatigue. SM fatigue positively related to SM discontinuous intention and negatively related to SM loyalty. Finally, SM engagement positively related to SM loyalty and negatively related to SM discontinuous intention. These findings contribute to the social media literature by proposing and empirically testing the SMD-R model, which integrates SM demands, SM resources, and the affective and behavioral responses of users.