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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Life satisfaction moderates the associations between motives and excessive social
networking site usage
Jin-Liang Wanga, James Gaskinb, Hai-Zhen Wangc and Dong Liud
a
Center for Mental Health Education, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Beibei District, Chongqing City, China; bMarriott School of
Management, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA; cDepartment of Tourism and Art for Humanity, Chongqing Youth & Vocational
Technical College, Bebei District, Chongqing City, China; dSchool of Psychology, Renmin Univeristy, Beijing, China
ABSTRACT
ARTICLE HISTORY
It has been suggested that excessive social networking sites (SNS) users might use SNS as a method of
coping with their life problems and that psychosocial well-being variables might interact with users
motives for using SNS in predicting problematic SNS use. The present research explores whether the
association between motives (i.e. self-expression and passing time) and excessive SNS usage is moderated by the users life satisfaction. A total of 996 college students were recruited from two colleges in
Chongqing China. The participants were divided into excessive and nonexcessive SNS usage groups
based on their mean score from the excessive SNS usage measurement. Regression analyses revealed
that life satisfaction moderates the effect of motives on problematic SNS behaviors among excessive
SNS users. Specifically, the motives were significantly related to excessive SNS usage for those with lower
life satisfaction, while neither motives were associated with excessive SNS usage in participants with
higher life satisfaction. For nonexcessive users, there was no significant interaction between the studied
motives and life satisfaction for predicting excessive SNS usage, although the motives were significantly
related to the extent of the users problematic SNS behaviors.
Introduction
The Internet has penetrated almost all aspects of daily living
due to its rapid development in the past few decades, which
has led to growing concerns regarding the impact of excessive
Internet use on individuals mental health (Kaltiala-Heino
et al. 2004; Jenaro et al. 2007). An important application of
the Internet among different age groups is social networking
sites (SNS), which are virtual communities where users can
create individual public profiles, interact with real-life friends
and meet other people based on shared interests. SNS are
seen as a global consumer phenomenon with an exponential
rise in usage within the last few years (Kuss & Griffiths
2011). For instance, Facebook had approximately 1.49 billion
monthly active users in the second quarter of 2015 (Statista
2015), and the estimated active users on China Sina Weibo
reached 249 million in 2014 (CNNIC 2015). SNS are especially popular among college students, who use them for a
variety of purposes, including social connections, sexual interactions, identity sharing, social investigation, social network
surfing, status updating, relationship maintenance, entertainment, information seeking and to simply pass time (Foregger
2008; Sheldon 2008; Rae & Lonborg 2015).
We acknowledge that studies have reported that SNS can
help users form and maintain social capital and experience
greater life satisfaction and social trust (Ellison et al. 2007;
Park et al. 2009; Wang et al. 2015) in addition to
enhancing
adolescents
self-esteem
and
well-being
CONTACT Jin-Liang Wang
wangjinliang09@gmail.com
Road, Beibei District, Chongqing City 400715, China
2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
KEYWORDS
Center for Mental Health Education, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, No. 2 Tiansheng
J. WANG ET AL.
Theoretical framework
Motives for SNS usage and excessive SNS usage
Individuals are motivated to use SNS to satisfy their needs.
Therefore, an approach encompassing usage and gratifications theory is often employed for investigating motives for
using SNS. According to the usage and gratifications perspective, individuals tend to actively select particular media and
consume content to satisfy their psychological needs (Katz
et al. 1974), which means that individuals may spend
Hypotheses
According to the Compensatory Internet Use theory, it would
be arbitrary to assume that everyone who uses SNS to pass
time or for escapism is at risk of excessive use. Only a
minority of all users experience problematic outcomes (i.e.
excessive SNS usage in the current study) (Kardefelt-Winther
2014c). Because Weibo is expected to be problematic only
when individuals use it as their main way to address negative
life circumstances, we anticipate that the moderating effect of
life satisfaction only appears for users with higher degrees of
excessive SNS usage behaviors. For nonexcessive users, psychological well-being may not moderate the association
between motives and excessive SNS use because these users
do not use SNS as means of relieving life problems. For this
reason, the sample was divided to be able to explore the
interaction effect among excessive and nonexcessive users
respectively based on participants mean scores on SNS use.
The participants with a mean score or higher were referred
to as the excessive use group, while those scoring lower than
the mean value were referred to as the non-excessive use
Figure 1. The two-way interaction effect of life satisfaction and passing time on
usage in the excessive Weibo-use group, N 380.
Methods
Researchers have suggested that studies on excessive SNS
usage should focus on specific sites rather than on general
usage and that the development of SNS addiction is likely to
J. WANG ET AL.
Participants
A sample of 996 college students were recruited from two
colleges in Chongqing China, of which 915 (Mage 19.87,
SDage 1.34, 23.6% male) completed valid questionnaires,
with a usable response rate of 91.86%. The sample consisted
of 46.9% of students in the first year, 38.7% of students in
the second year, 9.1% of students in the third year, and 5.3%
of students in the fourth year. Over half (55.9%) of the participants majored in natural science (math, physics, chemistry, biology, life sciences and computer sciences), and 44.1%
indicated that they majored in social science (economics,
business administration, education, philology, law, politics
and philosophy). All of the participants indicated that they
were Sina Weibo users. The participants were recruited during the Spring Semester 2015 through announcements in
various lecture halls. The advertisements included a brief
description of the nature of the study. Participants were compensated with 10, which is equivalent to USD $1.61. The
participants completed the surveys in a large lecture hall or
in their class during several 20-min sessions.
Measures
The Bergen facebook addiction scale (BFAS)
The BFAS (Andreassen et al. 2012) was revised to measure
excessive Weibo usage. It contains six items (e.g. Spent a lot
of time thinking about Weibo or planned use of Weibo and
Felt an urge to use Weibo more and more), and each item
was rated on a five-point Likert scale (from 1 very rarely to
5 very often). The Cronbachs alpha coefficient of the original form was 0.83. The internal consistency reliability coefficient in the current study was 0.86 (M 1.92, SD 0.85).
The life satisfaction scale
The satisfaction with life scale (SWLS) was used to assess the
participants global life satisfaction (Diener et al. 1985).
Participants rated five items on a seven-point Likert scale,
ranging from 1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree.
Example items included In most ways, my life is close to my
ideal and I am satisfied with my life (M 2.89, SD
0.77). In the current study, the Cronbachs alpha was 0.75.
Motives for using SNS
Self-expression and passing time were measured through
items adopted from Wang et al. (2015) social media usage
motive scale. Specifically, the motive of passing time was
Results
Descriptive and regression analyses
To conduct a comparative analysis, we used a procedure recommended by Kardeflet-Winther (2014c), which was to divide the sample into a highly excessive Weibo-use group and
a nonexcessive Weibo-use group, according to the participants scores on the BFAS (Moveruse 1.91, SDoveruse
0.85). The participants with Moveruse> 1.91 were referred to
as the excessive Weibo-use group, while those with a score of
1.91 or lower were referred to as the nonexcessive Weibo-use
group. This resulted in a final sample size of N 380 (Mage
19.93, SDage 1.37, Moveruse 2.73, SDoveruse 0.64,
male 25.1%) for the excessive Weibo group and N 535
(Mage 19.83, SDage 1.31, Moveruse 1.32, SDoveruse
0.29, male 22.5%) for the nonexcessive user group. The
scores obtained by the two groups on the BFAS were significantly different (t 45.78, p < 0.001). The zero-order correlations obtained for the variables among respondents with
excessive Weibo-use were computed. The results show that
passing time and self-expression, as well as life satisfaction,
were significantly correlated with excessive Weibo use
(r 0.16, p < 0.005; r 0.39, p < 0.005; and r 0.11,
p < 0.01, respectively) among excessive users. For nonexcessive users, passing time and self-expression were significantly
correlated with excessive Weibo use (r 0.26, p < 0.005 and
r 0.26, p < 0.005, respectively). However, life satisfaction
was not correlated with excessive Weibo use among nonexcessive users (r 0.05, p > 0.05).
A regression analysis was run to test H1. We entered the
interaction terms of passing time and life satisfaction into the
regression model. We followed the recommendations of
Cohen et al. (2003) for interpreting the interaction between
the two predictor variables. Specifically, the relationship
Table 1. The multiple regression model of the mean BFAS scores with the interaction terms of passing time and life satisfaction
among participants in the excessive Weibo-use group, N 380.
Model
Variables
Passing time
Life satisfaction
Passing time *Life satisfaction
Standardized beta
0.14
0.07
0.14
2.60
1.24
2.60
0.01
0.22
0.01
Table 2. A multiple regression model of the mean BFAS scores with the interaction terms of self-expression and life satisfaction
among participants in the excessive Weibo-use group, N 380.
Model
Variables
Self-expression
Life satisfaction
Self-expression *Life satisfaction
Standardized beta
0.36
0.01
0.16
7.99
0.13
2.93
0.00
0.90
0.001
Table 3. A multiple regression model of the mean BFAS scores with the interaction terms of passing time and life satisfaction among
participants in the nonexcessive Weibo-use group, N 553.
Model
Variables
Passing time
Life satisfaction
Passing time *Life satisfaction
Standardized beta
0.26
0.06
0.01
6.14
1.46
0.29
0.00
0.14
0.77
Table 4. Multiple regression model on the mean BFAS scores with the interaction term of the self-expression motive and life satisfaction among participants in the nonexcessive Weibo-use group, N 553.
Model
Variables
Self-expression
Life satisfaction
Self-expression * Life satisfaction
between the first predictor variable (i.e. passing time) and the
dependent variable (i.e. excessive SNS usage) was plotted
when the levels of the second predictor variable (i.e. the
moderator) were one standard deviation below and one
standard deviation above the mean for that variable (i.e. the
moderator). We also tested the statistical significance of each
of these two slopes (Aiken et al. 1991), which represented the
simple effect of the predictor variable on excessive Weibo use
at two levels of the moderator variable.
As shown in Table 1, passing time and the interaction term
of passing time and life satisfaction were significantly related
to excessive Weibo use, with b 0.14, p < 0.05, and b
0.14, p < 0.05, respectively. Life satisfaction was not related
to excessive Weibo use, with b 0.07, p > 0.05. Regarding
the correspondence of the slopes with the two-level moderator
(i.e. life satisfaction), a simple-effect analysis revealed a positive association between passing time and excessive Weibo use
when life satisfaction was low (b 0.32, p < 0.01). However,
the significant association between passing time and excessive
Weibo use disappeared among users with high life satisfaction
(b 0.08, p > 0.05). Therefore, the results support H1.
We performed a similar regression analysis regarding H2
to test whether life satisfaction moderates the association
between self-expression and excessive Weibo use among
excessive users. The results showed that self-expression and
the interaction term of self-expression and life satisfaction
were significantly related to excessive Weibo use, with
b 0.38, p < 0.001, and b 0.16, p < 0.01, respectively.
Life satisfaction alone (i.e. not as part of the interaction) was
not directly related to excessive Weibo use, with b 0.01,
p > 0.05. Regarding the correspondence of the slopes with the
two-level moderator (i.e. life satisfaction), a simple-effect analysis revealed a positive association between self-expression
Standardized beta
0.26
0.06
0.002
6.14
1.36
0.05
0.00
0.17
0.96
Discussion
The current research contributed to the literature by investigating whether life satisfaction can relieve the effects of
motives on excessive SNS use among excessive users.
According to the methodological procedure suggested by
Kardefelt-Winther (2014b, 2014c, 2015), we divided our participants into excessive and non-excessive Weibo use groups
based on their mean scores on the BFAS and then tested
whether life satisfaction moderated the associations between
two motives and excessive Sina Weibo use. We found that
passing time and self-expression were significantly related to
J. WANG ET AL.
Disclosure statement
The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are
responsible for the content and writing of this article.
Funding information
This study has been funded by the Planning Projects for the National
Education Science: Grant No. CBA140146. Grant title is The Influence
of Social Networking Sites Use on Adolescents and Young Adults
Mental Health and its Interventions.
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