Gratifications for using social media

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the general and specific gratifications that drive users’ choice of different social media. Sina Weibo and WeChat in China were selected for the current study. Two separate empirical surveys were conducted and 368 valid data were collected from Chinese university students experienced in using Sina Weibo or WeChat. Exploratory factor analysis, paired t test and independent-samples t test were employed for data analysis. The results identify four general gratifications for using different social media: hedonic gratification, affection gratification, information gratification and social gratification. In addition, factor structure of information gratification is different for different social media. Furthermore, the strength of each gratification differs to varying degrees across the use of different social media. Information gratification plays the most salient role in using Sina Weibo, whereas affection gratification is the most important motive for the use of WeChat. Also, the use of Sina Weibo can better fulfill individuals’ information and hedonic gratifications, while individuals prefer to use WeChat for achieving gratifications of social and affection.

Keywords

uses and gratifications theory social media motivation WeChat microblogging SinaWeibo

Users may obtain the same gratifications from different social media, but how the gratifications are achieved may be different.

Introduction

The use of social media has become increasingly widespread with high penetration rates and has had significant influences on people’s daily lives (China Internet Network Information Center 2016a, China Internet Network Information Center 2016b). Social media refers to “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content”, such as social networking, microblogging, blogs and content communities (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010: 61). It provides a useful and effective vehicle for information creation, sharing and seeking as well as socialization (Kietzmann et al. 2011). Although social media has continued to advance, studies report that one type of social media is not being replaced by another (Quan-Haase and Young 2010; Raacke and Bonds-Raacke 2008). Rather, users may purposefully employ different social media due to their media preference and different needs (Lo and Leung 2009; Dimmick et al. 2000). According to a report issued by iResearch (2014), 23.8% of individuals in China use only one type of social media, and 41.8% of individuals use two types simultaneously. This indicates that individual users tend to embrace a range of social media, and each form may satisfy their unique needs (Quan-Haase and Young 2010; Ku et al. 2013). In addition, there is intense competition in the Chinese social media market and individuals’ switching cost from one service to another is quite low (China Internet Network Information Center 2016b; Gan 2016). Thus, it is valuable to examine motivators influencing users’ choice of different social media.

In the literature, prior studies have employed different theories to investigate the use of social media, such as the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis 1989), the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen 1991) and Innovation Diffusion Theory (Rogers 1995). Although these findings provide insights into the use of social media, they cannot fully explain the complex nature of individuals’ choices and behaviors (Ku et al. 2013). In addition, extant research has mainly focused on individuals’ use of one type of social media (e.g., social networking, instant messaging or microblogging), and comparative analysis of the use of different social media is limited. This study attempts to address these issues. Drawing upon the uses and gratifications (U&G) theory (Katz et al. 1974), this study investigates the gratifications obtained from the use of social media. Specifically, this study seeks answers to the following research question:

Are there general or specific gratifications obtained across the use of different social media?

In particular, considering the popularity and high penetrating rates of Sina Weibo (‘新浪微博’ in Chinese) and WeChat (‘微信’ in Chinese) in China, (China Internet Network Information Center 2016a, China Internet Network Information Center 2016b), they were selected for this study. Thus, they could provide insights into the best practices in this area and serve as an appropriate context for exploring motivations behind the use of social media (Zhang et al. 2014).

Sina Weibo is a microblogging and social networking service that enables the creating and sharing of information over the microblogging network. It has similar features to Twitter, in that individuals can post short messages about any topic with a limited number of characters (e.g., 140 characters) (Liu, Cheung, and Lee 2016). Also, individuals can follow others to receive their updated messages and leave comments.

WeChat is an instant messaging and social networking service that supports multiple communications between two or more individuals. Similar to WhatsApp, it enables real-time communication via, e.g., text, voice and video messaging as well as location sharing. Moreover, functions such as Moments and public accounts provide users an innovative way for socialization and obtaining information.

Compared to WeChat, individual users of Sina Weibo could receive a variety of information and up-to-date information via functions such as ‘hot topics’. It covers topics such as domestic and foreign news and entertainment, as well as industry information. The specific feature of WeChat lies in the familiarity of users; that is, most WeChat ‘friends’ recognize each other in reality.

Empirical data about the use of Sina Weibo and WeChat were collected through survey questionnaires. In doing so, this study offers several contributions. First, it conducts a comparative study to identify the gratifications obtained from the use of different social media. This expands the scope of research on gratifications for using social media with reference to a comparison. Second, this study reveals the commonalities and differences among the motives to use Sina Weibo and WeChat. The findings on general gratifications could be applied to deep understanding of the choice of other social media. Third, this study highlights affection gratification as the most vital motivation for the use of WeChat. This will deepen our understanding of the motivation to use specific social media. From a managerial perspective, findings from this study suggest how to attract and maintain users by satisfying the specific gratifications they obtain from different social media.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The theoretical background and literature review are described in the next section. The following section puts forward the research methods, including research design and data collection. The findings are presented in the next section, following up with a discussion in the penultimate section. The last section summarizes the implications and limitations of the study.

Theoretical background and literature review

Originating in the research field of radio communication, the uses and gratifications (U&G) theory was widely used and developed in mass communication research. The U&G theory explains why individuals actively choose specific media to gratify a variety of needs (Katz et al. 1974). It identifies the social and psychological needs that drive individuals’ use of particular media (Katz et al. 1974). According to the U&G theory, individuals are active in choosing media to meet their specific needs. As Li et al. (2015) stated, individuals are aware of their needs, which arouse motivators that affect their use of communication media, thus leading to various outcomes, such as affective and cognitive outcomes (Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch 1974; Weibull 1985). The U&G theory has been applied to a variety of traditional media contexts to understand motivations for media use, such as television (Rubin 1981), newspapers (Elliott and Rosenberg 1987), and the telephone (Dimmick et al. 1994). With the development of the Internet, researchers have also applied the U&G theory to identify motivations underlying Internet use (Dimmick et al. 2000, Stafford et al. 2004).

Recently, a growing stream of research expands the U&G theory to the context of social media, attempting to explain motivations to use particular social media, such as instant messaging (IM), social networking and microblogging (Alhabash et al. 2014, Han et al. 2015, Coursaris et al. 2013, Raacke and Bonds-Raacke 2008, Yoo et al. 2014). For example, Alhabash et al. (2014) found that entertainment, self-expression, medium appeal, information sharing, self-documentation, socialization, and escapism significantly affect the use of Facebook. Xu et al. (2012) revealed that utilitarian gratifications of immediate access and coordination, hedonic gratifications of affection and leisure predict the use of social network services (SNS). Han et al. (2015) noted that gratification of social connection needs significantly affects Twitter users’ continued usage intention. Raacke and Bonds-Raacke (2008) found the following gratifications obtained from SNS: keep in touch with old/current friends, post/look at pictures, make new friends, locate old friends, learn about events, post-social functions, feel connected, share information, academic purposes and dating.

In addition, researchers have attempted to conduct comparative analysis to identify the commonalities and differences in the use of different social media (Ku et al. 2013, Ha et al. 2015, Lo and Leung 2009, Quan-Haase and Young 2010). The empirical study of Quan-Haase and Young (2010) showed that gratifications obtained from Facebook include pastime, affection, fashion, share problems, sociability, and social information; and the comparative analysis revealed that Facebook is related to having fun and knowing about the social activities occurring in one’s social network, whereas IM is about relationship maintenance and development. The findings of Ku et al. (2013) revealed that relationship maintenance, information seeking, amusement, and style significantly influence the use of SNS, IM, and e-mail; moreover, sociability has a significant impact on the use of IM and SNS, whereas killing time significantly affects the use of IM. Table 1 summarizes the findings of prior studies applying the U&G theory to investigate gratifications obtained from the use of social media.

Table 1.

Gratifications obtained from the use of social media.

Social media	Gratifications	Study
Instant messaging	Relationship maintenance, information seeking, amusement, style, sociability, and kill time	Ku et al. (2013)
	Relationship maintenance and development	Quan-Haase and Young (2010)
Social networking	Utilitarian gratifications of immediate access and coordination, hedonic gratifications of affection and leisure	Xu et al. (2012)
	Entertainment, self-expression, medium appeal, information sharing, self-documentation, socialization, and escapism	Alhabash et al. (2014)
Microblogging	Gratification of social connection needs	Han et al. (2015)
	Hedonic gratification, utilitarian gratification and social appearance values	Yoo et al. (2014)

In summary, the U&G theory has developed to identify how and why individuals use a particular communication medium. Based on the prior findings, the U&G theory has been empirically validated to reveal motives driving media use, and it fits within the research context of social media. Thus, the U&G theory is adopted as the research framework in the current study to explore individuals’ use of Sina Weibo and WeChat in China.

Research methods

Research design

The purpose of the current study is to examine the factors affecting users’ choice of different social media. Sina Weibo and WeChat in China are selected for the study. Following the study of Ku et al. (2013), a three-stage research design was conducted in the study. First, as the U&G theory “requires an initial pool of items to serve as the potential gratifications” (Ku et al. 2013), a preliminary list of items was developed based on prior studies related to gratifications for social media use. Items from Quan-Haase and Young (2010), Ku et al. (2013) and Yoo et al. (2014) were employed in the current study, because their studies focused on the research contexts of social networking, instant messaging and microblogging and similar gratifications are expected to motivate the use of Sina Weibo and WeChat. Twenty items were formulated and used in the survey questionnaire as the potential gratifications. Then, two questionnaires were generated, which included the same 20 items, with further modifications to fit the contexts of Sina Weibo and WeChat. Twenty-five users with rich social media usage experience were invited for a pilot study to confirm the content validity of the questionnaires. Based on their comments and feedback, sentences were rephrased and the questionnaires were refined to improve the clarity and understandability.

The empirical data for the current study were collected via survey questionnaires. After the data collection, exploratory factor analysis was first used to extract the structure of gratifications obtained from Sina Weibo and WeChat. Then paired t test and independent-samples t test were conducted to compare the gratifications for using Sina Weibo and WeChat.

Data collection

The data were collected through survey questionnaires. According to Ku et al. (2013), one questionnaire with repetition of items in Sina Weibo and WeChat would be tedious for respondents to complete, thus Sina Weibo and WeChat were surveyed separately through two independent questionnaires. The convenience sampling procedure was conducted among university students at two universities in Southern China. Because university students comprise the largest portion of social media users (Kantar 2015), the sample is appropriate. Questionnaires were distributed in the university libraries. Students experienced in using Sina Weibo or WeChat were invited to fill up the questionnaire, and small gifts were given as a reward for their participation. Respondents were asked to indicate their perceived level of agreement for the 20 items describing gratifications obtained from using Sina Weibo or WeChat. All items were measured with a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from ‘strongly disagree (1)’ to ‘strongly agree (7).’

A total of 398 respondents completed the questionnaires (i.e. Sina Weibo: 201, WeChat: 197). All the responses were scrutinized and those (30 responses) with the same values for all questions were dropped. As a result, the remaining 368 valid responses (i.e. Sina Weibo: 183, WeChat: 185) were used for further analysis. Table 2 shows the demographic information of the samples.

Table 2.

Demographic information of respondents.

Measure	Items	Sina Weibo (n=183)		WeChat (n=185)
Measure	Items	Frequency	Percentage (%)	Frequency	Percentage (%)
Gender	Male	78	42.6	80	43.2
Gender	Female	105	57.4	105	56.8
Age	Less than 18	0	0.0	4	2.2
	18-22	134	73.2	126	68.1
	23-29	49	26.8	55	29.7
Usage frequency	Almost online all the day	62	33.9	123	66.5
	3-5 times for one day	41	22.4	37	20.0
	Once or twice for one day	48	26.2	15	8.1
	Twice or three times for one week	32	17.5	9	4.9
	Twice or three times for one month	0	0.0	1	.5
Time period for the usage	Less than 6 months	9	4.9	3	1.6
	6 - 12 months	6	3.3	33	17.8
	1 - 2 years	33	18.0	76	41.1
	2 - 3 years	54	29.5	44	23.8
	More than 3 years	81	44.3	29	15.7

Findings

Gratifications for the use of Sina Weibo and WeChat

Exploratory factor analysis was conducted, using principal component analysis and Varimax rotation, to identify the gratifications for using Sina Weibo and WeChat. The factor loadings of each item were required to be greater than 0.50, and the eigenvalue was set to be larger than the generally recognized 1 cut-off (Hair et al. 2006). Finally, two of the 20 items were dropped because they could not satisfy the requirements and could not be included into the emerging factors in Table 3.

Table 3.

Factors extracted for Sina Weibo and WeChat.

I use Sina Weibo/WeChat……	Sina Weibo factors				WeChat factors
I use Sina Weibo/WeChat……	F1	F2	F3	F4	F1	F2	F3	F4
F1: Hedonic gratification
because it relaxes me	.874				.805
because it is entertaining for me	.847				.807
to have fun	.810				.809
because I enjoy it	.803				.809
to get away from pressures	.792				.774
to get away from what I am doing	.728				.621
to kill time	.634				.610
F2: Affection gratification
to thank people		.852				.796
to show others that I am concerned about them		.834				.844
to show others encouragement		.824				.859
to let people know I care about them		.773				.800
to help others		.714				.770
F3: Information gratification
to obtain helpful information			.855				.852
to obtain valuable information			.826				.849
to find out new information							.790
F4: Social gratification
to make new acquaintances				.830				.835
to allow people to find me easily				.715				.685
to enable me to find others with same interests				.644				.601
Eigenvalue	6.376	3.137	1.420	1.121	8.332	1.845	1.755	1.030
Variance explained (%)	37.503	18.452	8.353	6.592	46.291	10.251	9.749	5.721
Cronbach’s α	0.910	0.886	0.887	0.685	0.911	0.922	0.872	0.711

Gratifications for the use of Sina Weibo

Four factors were extracted based on the factor analysis. Factor 1, comprising seven items, was related to entertainment, relaxing, killing time and having fun; and thus was labeled ‘hedonic gratification’. The eigenvalue of this factor is 6.376 and the value of Cronbach’s α is 0.910, explaining 37.503% of the total variance. Factor 2, including five items, was related to showing concern and encouragement, as well as expressing friendship; and thus was labeled ‘affection gratification’. This factor showed good eigenvalue (3.137) and reliability with the value of Cronbach’s α 0.886, explaining 18.452% of the total variance. Factor 3, consisting of two items, was related to obtaining or searching information; and thus was labeled ‘information gratification’. This factor revealed good eigenvalue (1.420) and reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.887). Factor 4, comprising three items, was related to connecting and interacting with others; and thus was labeled ‘social gratification’. The eigenvalue of this factor is 1.121 and the value of Cronbach’s α is 0.685.

Gratifications for the use of WeChat

The same four factors were extracted to reflect WeChat users’ gratifications, i.e. hedonic gratification, affection gratification, information gratification and social gratification. The hedonic gratification factor consists of seven items, of which the eigenvalue is 8.332 and the Cronbach’s α value is 0.911, explaining 46.291% of the total variance. The affection gratification factor comprises five items, indicating good eigenvalue (1.845) and reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.922). The information gratification factor includes three items; the eigenvalue of this factor is 1.755 and the value of Cronbach’s α is 0.872. And the social gratification factor comprises three items, showing good eigenvalue (1.030) and reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.711).

Comparative analysis of the gratifications

Paired t test was first conducted to determine how the level of importance of gratifications varies between Sina Weibo and WeChat. Table 4 shows the gratification ranking in each type of social media with mean comparison by paired t test. With respect to the use of Sina Weibo, users mainly obtain information gratification and hedonic gratification, followed by affection gratification and social gratification. For the use of WeChat, affection gratification and information gratification are the major gratifications obtained, followed by hedonic gratification and social gratification.

Table 4.

Mean comparison of gratifications for the use of Sina Weibo and WeChat (Paired t test).

			Social gratification	Hedonic gratification	Affection
Gratifications for the use of Sina Weibo
Information gratification	5.3880	1	11.729***	1.397	8.417***
Social gratification	4.3825	4		−10.522***	−4.217***
Hedonic gratification	5.2959	2			7.627***
Affection gratification	4.6929	3
Gratifications for the use of WeChat
Information gratification	5.1189	2	5.740***	2.892**	−0.328
Social gratification	4.6613	4		−3.008**	−5.759
Hedonic gratification	4.8958	3			−3.700***
Affection gratification	5.1459	1

Note: **p<.01, ***p<.001

Independent-samples t test was then employed to reveal the strength of gratifications obtained from the use of Sina Weibo and WeChat. Table 5 demonstrates the mean of each gratification for the use of Sina Weibo and WeChat applied by independent-samples t test. The results show that individuals prefer to use Sina Weibo for obtaining information gratification and hedonic gratification, while the use of WeChat can better fulfill their social and affection gratifications.

Table 5.

Score comparison between Sina Weibo and WeChat (Independent-samples t test).

	Sina Weibo (N=183)		WeChat (N=185)
Factor	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	T value
Information gratification	5.388	0.933	5.119	1.067	2.574**
Social gratification	4.383	1.014	4.661	1.170	−2.442*
Hedonic gratification	5.296	0.864	4.896	0.941	4.247***
Affection gratification	4.693	0.927	5.146	1.030	−4.437***

Note: *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001

Discussion

This study examines gratifications that motivate users’ choice of different social media through comparative analysis. Results show that hedonic gratification, affection gratification, information gratification and social gratification are the four general gratifications in social media use. That is, the biggest similarity in individuals’ motivations to use Sina Weibo and WeChat is that users obtain the same types of gratifications. This is consistent with our prior exploratory study through interviews (Gan and Wang 2015). With the development and advancement of social media, various social media, such as WeChat and Sina Weibo, evolve into multi-functional information systems (Gan and Wang 2015), implying that their features and services overlap. For example, both WeChat and Sina Weibo provide the following functions: Chatting, Share, Comment and Like. Furthermore, the results reveal that the factor structure of information gratification is different for the two social media. This finding is consistent with the study of Gan and Wang (2015). It indicates that although individuals could fulfill the same gratifications from different social media, how the gratifications are achieved may be different.

However, the results also indicate that the strength of each gratification differs to varying degrees across the use of different social media. Information gratification plays the most salient role in using Sina Weibo, while affection gratification is the most important motive for the use of WeChat.

Sina Weibo is considered to be a convenient platform for broadcasting, sharing and exchanging a variety of information (Liu et al. 2016). Users can post information about any topic and others can read and comment by following. More importantly, Sina Weibo can support two modes of information seeking: passive monitoring of events through following RSS feeds of a selected group of users, and active seeking of practically effective information by posting messages and requests to individual users or a network of users (Savolainen 1995). As Liu et al. (2016) noted, it is the value of information dissemination that motivates individuals’ use of Sina Weibo and makes them satisfied.

With respect to the use of WeChat, users pay more attention to affection gratification. As WeChat was originally designed for private socialization, those WeChat ‘friends’ are usually recognized in the real world, such as family, classmates, colleagues and friends in reality. Also, user privacy can be well protected through controlling who joins their friends list, viewing their information and managing how others can find them online (Nay 2013). Thus, WeChat provides a better way for users to freely show their affections, e.g., expressing their encouragement and concern toward others. Also, users can satisfy their affection gratification though a variety of features that WeChat offers, such as real-time voice intercom, group chat in live chat sessions, video calls, and Moments (a timeline where users can ‘like’ or ‘comment’) (WeChat 2013).

Another difference among gratifications for using Sina Weibo and WeChat is that hedonic gratification plays a more important role in affecting the use of Sina Weibo than that of WeChat. Sina Weibo offers many options for users to, for example, kill time, have fun and entertain themselves. For example, the feature of ‘issue a topic with two ‘#’’ often refers to those activities attracting users’ interests, and anyone interested in this topic can participate and follow it by posting information with the same title. Also, users can learn more about hot topics through the feature of ‘hot topics’, and just look around by ‘Sina Weibo square’. A variety of such features provided by Sina Weibo can better satisfy different users’ needs, creating entertainment and amusement, thus developing hedonic gratification.

Implications and limitations

This study contributes to the existing literature in several ways. First, as noted earlier, most previous studies focused on one type of social media to explore factors affecting social media use. In the current study, a comparative study was conducted to identify motives driving users’ choice of different social media. The results provide empirical evidence for the assumption that different gratifications motivate individuals’ use of a range of social media (Ku et al. 2013). This expands the research scope on gratifications for using different social media with reference to a comparison. Second, the U&G theory was adopted to reveal the commonalities and differences among gratifications to use different social media. Results indicate that four general gratifications for the use of Sina Weibo and WeChat were extracted and the strength of each gratification varies across the use of Sina Weibo and WeChat. Considering that prior studies have revealed motives of using one type of social media, the findings on general gratifications could be applied to deepen understanding of the choice of other social media. Third, this study highlights affection gratification to be the most vital motivation for the use of WeChat, which has been less considered in prior studies. This deepens our understanding of user behavior in social media. This also indicates that, though traditional dimensions in the U&G framework have been widely used for investigating the use of various media, they may not be sufficient to explain use of new types of social media (Liu et al. 2016).

The findings of this study also have implications for managers and designers of social media on how to attract and maintain users. The results reveal the general and specific gratifications for different social media. The general gratifications reflect the common expectations that users obtain from social media (Ku et al. 2013), while the specific gratifications are unique in that only a particular social media can satisfy them. This indicates that designers and managers should not only provide the features necessary to fulfill users’ general gratifications, but also pay attention to the design of unique features to satisfy specific gratifications. For example, this study highlights the relative importance of information gratification obtained from the use of Sina Weibo. Thus, developers of Sina Weibo should provide more features to facilitate information sharing, exchanging and dissemination, e.g., personalized recommendation based on user interests and intimacy and more cooperation with professional organizations on content creation (Sina 2016). Also, the results indicate the strength of each gratification for the use of different social media. This implies that the developers of social media should take the ranked gratifications into account when designing features. For example, affection gratification was found to be the most important motive for WeChat users. Therefore, WeChat developers should design a variety of ways for users to conveniently express their affections (e.g., encouragement and concerns). In addition to the ‘Like’ button, adding more unique elements into interaction with others, such as emoticons, could be beneficial.

There are a few limitations to this study that should be acknowledged. First, the research sample was university students. Although most social media users are young, user behavior of older groups may be different. Consequently, caution should be exercised when generalizing the findings of this study to other demographic groups. Users of different groups, such as elderly users, will be considered in a future study. Second, the items of gratifications for using different social media were limited. Other gratifications might also play important roles in affecting users’ choice of different social media. Future research could conduct a qualitative study, such as interviews, to reveal other possible motives.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71403301).

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