Adoption of social media technology: the effect of always logged-in, return on time and fear of missing out

Abstract

Adoption of new technologies have been of importance for researchers for a long time, and constructs are continuously being analyzed to better understand what makes consumers more likely to adopt. The use of social media technologies are still increasing, and consumers adopt and use more platforms simultaneously now than before. This paper seeks to provide new content to the literature of social media technology, by looking at how different construct affect consumer’s intention to adopt new social media technologies. Being Always logged-in (ALI), wanting to achieve Return on Time (RoT) and having the Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) are phenomena in the marketing literature, which explains consumer behavior and their needs. This paper analyzes how these three phenomena influence the adoption of new social media technologies. It is also important to identify drivers that leads to consumers being always logged in on social media. To better understand the construct of ALI, the paper seeks to identify how Habits, FoMO and three different dimensions of Nudging, including Nudge Hygiene Factor, Motivational Nudges and Social Nudges influence ALI. To fully understand how these construct influence each other, it is necessary to establish a model that both includes the drivers of ALI and the phenomena influencing Adoption. Our study is based on a qualitative research, where a survey is conducted, making it possible to empirically test the results. The findings show that ALI, RoT and FoMO have a positive effect on Adoption of social media technology, meaning the phenomena does lead to increased likelihood of adoption. Habits positively influence ALI, which indicates that consumers using social media automatically are more likely to be always logged in. Having fear of missing out gave us opposite results, and does not lead to being always logged in on social media. The different dimensions of Nudging show that Nudge Hygiene Factor and Motivational Nudges have a positive effect on ALI, while Social Nudges does not. This indicates that people are influenced by their own motivation rather than significant others when it comes to using and reacting to nudges on social media.