Social Comparison Research On Social Media

With the birth of Web2.0,the social media have developed rapidly.It allows users to broadcast self-relevant information directly or only to a specific group of audience.As the same time these Web sites offer a gateway for online identity constructions.Furthermore,online identity constructions are no longer limited by factors such as personal characteristics,social backgrounds.People can easily realize impression management.Online environments enable individuals to engage in a controlled setting where an ideal identity can be conveyed.Consequently,the Self-Presentation 2.0 is coming.Now in computer-mediated communication mode,users tend to selectively optimize the performance of themselves.Therefore,users are among a large amount of optimization information in the social media environment.And users make less effort to get others personal information.Compared to the offline environment,social comparison is more private on social media and it is more frequent between users.Thus,the social comparison2.0 has already begun.For example,by the end of December 2016,there were more than 890 million global monthly active users of Wechat.And the moment is the Top1 function of Wechat.84%users indicate that they browse the Moment every time they open the Wechat.From here we see that the importance of social media platforms in people's daily lives and the potential impact on people's lives.Social comparison is a double-edged sword.Social comparison which happened on social media may push users forward,however,it more likely bring people a series of adverse effects.Therefore,it is important to pay attention to the social comparison phenomenon and its negative results in social media.Based on the previous researches,this paper explored the impact of information consumption on different directions of social comparisons in social media,and the impact of negative emotions produced by social comparisons on user switching intention.Taking the self-esteem as an adjustment variable,this research also explored the effect's differences among different user groups.Based on the social comparison theory,we combines the three-layered appraisal-emotion-behavior/intention model which changed from stress-stain-outcome model and social comparison-empathy-prosocial behavior model which is presented by recent research as theoretical framework.And we built an research model of information consumption effect on users' negative emotions,to further understand the impact factors of users switching intention of social media.The approach we took in empirically testing our proposed theoretical constructs and research model was a survey.We used the snowball method to conduct the survey and finally we totally recalled 522 valid questionnaires,and with the use of statistical analysis software SPSS and SmartPLS2.0,we test the validity of the questionnaires and the model.The main conclusions were as follows:(1)Affective commitment of users has negative influence on switching intention.This result has been proved similarly in the field of information system research.This suggests that affective commitment is a major antecedent variable in the social media which leads to user switching intentions.(2)Envy and contempt,as a kind of hurt emotion,have positive influence on user switching intention.At the same time,the influence of envy on switching intention is more obvious than the influence of contempt.(3)Information consumption has positive influence on both envy and contempt.But from the data results,the positive effect of information consumption on envy is slightly higher than that of contempt.(4)Self-esteem could adjust the relationship between information consumption and contempt.The higher the level of self-esteem is,the stronger the positive influence between them.However,there is no significant moderating effect of self-esteem on the relationship between information consumption and envy.The main innovations of this paper are as follows:(1)Based on social comparison theory,this paper explores the impact of passive and non-interactive information consumption on user's switching intention in the context of social media.(2)This paper through different directions of social comparison to explore the influence between social comparison and user's emotion and user's behavior of social media.Which provides a new angle of view for the research of social comparison.(3)Previous research on social comparison in social media environments only focused on users,subjective well-being or mental health as a major dependent variable.However,in the social media environment,the impact of a large number of social comparisons is not only more specific to the user itself,but more directly to the user's behavior.In this paper,the final results of social comparison are applied to the user's switching intention and put forward suggestions for sustainable development for social media providers.