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Considering the popularity and addictive attributes of microblogging, the purpose of this paper is to explore the key drivers of the microblogging addiction tendency, and to investigate the causal relationship between microblogging usage and addiction tendency through the lens of the uses and gratifications (U&G) theory.

By extending the U&G theory to accommodate the negative consequences of gratification, a research model that explains the relationships among microblogging use, gratification and addiction tendency was developed and empirically examined based on the data collected from 520 microblogging users in China.

The results showed that different types of microblogging use lead to different categories of gratification to different extents, while different categories of gratification play different roles in determining the level of addiction tendency. Specifically, the effect of content gratification on addiction is marginal, while social gratification has significant effects on all dimensions of addiction tendency.

The present study has both theoretical and practical implications. From a theoretical perspective, unlike many previous studies applied the U&G theory to explore the positive outcomes of media uses, this paper extends the U&G by including addiction tendency as a negative psychological outcome of U&G., resulting a research framework (use-gratification-addiction framework). Meanwhile, this paper contributes to the extending literature by examining the constructs of U&G at a granular level and investigated the causal relationship between “uses” and “gratifications.”

While prior research has established that traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a risk factor for violent offending, there is little understanding of mechanisms that may underpin this relationship. This is problematic, as a better understanding of these mechanisms could facilitate more effective targeting of treatment. This study aims to address these gaps in the extant literature by examining TBI as a predictor of violent offending and test for mediation effects through cognitive constructs of dual systems imbalance and hostility among a sample of justice-involved youth (JIY).

The Pathways to Desistance data were analyzed. The first three waves of this data set comprising the responses of 1,354 JIY were analyzed. Generalized structural equation modeling was used to test for direct and indirect effects of interest. A bootstrap resampling process was used to compute unbiased standard errors for determining the statistical significance of mediation effects.

Lifetime experience of TBI was associated with increased violent offending frequency at follow-up. Hostility significantly mediated this relationship, but dual systems imbalance did not. This indicated that programming focused on reducing hostility among JIY who have experienced TBI could aid in reducing violent recidivism rates.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study was the first to identify significant mediation of the relationship between TBI and violent offending through hostility.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how WeChat addiction influences users’ physical, mental, and social health.

A national survey was conducted in China. A total of 1,058 responses were collected from 31 regions of China.

The regression results show that WeChat addiction is negatively associated with users’ physical, mental, and social health. The negative effects are significant even after adjusting for the effects of the Big Five personality traits, years of using WeChat, and demographic variables such as age, gender, education level, and monthly income. Years of using WeChat is not significantly related to users’ health. It is also found that the influence of WeChat addiction on health outcomes is sensitive to years of WeChat use. The influence is dormant when users have less than three years of WeChat usage, but starts to exhibit itself after three years.

Addictive use of WeChat is associated with declining overall health among Chinese users. Given the cross-sectional nature of this study, definite causal relationship between WeChat addiction and health deterioration cannot be established. Controlled experiments are needed to further examine the causal effects of WeChat addiction.

WeChat is the most popular mobile social network service (SNS) in China, but its comprehensive impact on users’ health is rarely studied. This paper extends the extant research on SNS addiction by providing a deepened understanding of how mobile SNS addiction affects personal health in the unique context of WeChat, which provides an important contribution to the interdisciplinary research in public health, psychology, and information systems.

This article considers the independent liberty interests of children in foster care and their mothers in parental termination proceedings. Recent federal reforms impose a mandatory deadline for the state to terminate parental rights. That policy erroneously presumes that the passage of time alone establishes parental fault and satisfies a parent’s due process rights. It also fails to protect the minority of children who assert an interest in preserving a safe relationship with mothers who are unlikely to meet the state’s schedule – including many substance abusers and victims of domestic violence.

The purpose of this paper is to reinterpret addiction to social network services (SNSs), not from the traditional clinical perspective as a disorder, but from a management perspective as consumer behaviour to examine its possibility as a manageable resource.

A survey was conducted on heavy users of SNSs. Based on the data the authors performed an exploratory factor analysis to define SNS addiction and to construct its dimensions.

The authors termed SNS addiction as an “addictive consumption trait” (ACT) of SNS and its underlying dimensions are salience, euphoria, immersion, compulsion, and association.

The authors used SNS user behaviour as the sample for their empirical analysis. However there is a variety of other internet services available and different internet services may show different consumer behaviour. Therefore, for future research, the authors suggest conducting a comparative study on the influence of addiction on different types of internet services.

With the newly constructed dimensions of ACT of SNS, firms could find out the causal relationships between the attributes of their SNSs on each dimension of ACT of SNS. Once firms understand the influences of each one of the attributes on ACT of SNS, they can re‐strategise their resource allocation for maximising consumers' ACT of SNS.

SNS addiction has been viewed as a clinical disorder for treatment. The paper considers SNS addiction from the marketing perspective, which is a novel approach in the study of addiction. Through this study the authors hope to trigger academic discussions about ACT of SNS as consumer behaviour and as a manageable resource.

A recent discovery related to risk behavior is the finding that neurobiological development of impulse control in young people greatly lags that of cognitive evaluation of risk. This suggests that self‐control could be an important variable in risk perception. The goal of the present study is investigation of the relationship between self‐control and perceived physical risk to self in off‐road motorcycling.

Consistent with the age range in which the developmental lag between impulse control and cognitive evaluation of risk occurs, a sample of subjects aged 18‐24 was chosen. All respondents reported at least some experience in off‐road motorcycling. Subjects filled‐out paper and pencil questionnaires addressing perceived physical risk to themselves, level of experience in the sport, relative skill, expected fun, level of self‐control, and estimated risk for an average other participant in dirt‐biking.

Self‐control exhibited a significant, inverse correlation with perceived risk to self, and this variable had a significant negative regression coefficient in multiple regression predicting risk to self. Also, self‐control was found to have little correlation to other predicting variables, suggesting that it exerts a relatively unique influence on risk to self.

Data were not collected within a field setting and respondents did not experience the vibrancy of emotions of the live sport or the social influence of other bikers. This may have diminished the effects of these factors on perceived risk.

A non‐significant correlation was found for skill and perceived risk to self, suggesting that prospective participants in the sport might not let their initial lack of skill deter them from the activity. Additionally, expected fun increased with increasing experience, suggesting that participants are self‐motivated to repeat the activity.

Self‐control has received no apparent attention as a factor influencing perceived risk in sport. Findings from the present study suggest that this variable has a strong influence, at least in young people.

There have been recent calls for research into the impulse shopping behaviours of adolescent consumers – an important topic because adolescents are: an increasingly important market segment; a segment which has recently been empowered by the availability of easy credit; and which is increasingly targeted by strategic marketing collateral. This paper responds to the call by aiming to focus on the impulse shopping behaviours of adolescents.

The research is qualitative in nature and utilises lengthy mini focus group interviews of both adolescent and adult consumer shoppers. The verbatim transcriptions are then subjected to both manual and automated textual analysis to derive conceptual and thematic maps of each group's discussions in relation to impulse shopping.

Consistent with recent neuropsychological literature on adolescents, the findings show clear differences between adolescents and adults in relation to impulse shopping. Significant differences were found in the areas of antecedent moods, shopping purpose, and the range of perceived constraints which may moderate impulse shopping behaviour. The research also shows that impulse buying among adolescents is a behaviour which is undertaken often in response to stress and/or a need for mood amelioration and further that their conceptualisation of impulse shopping is only distantly related to a deficient set of perceived constraints when compared to adult shoppers.

This improved understanding of the bases of adolescent impulse shopping will assist in the design of educational programs to reduce the frequency of adolescent financial problems.

There may be a reduction in the number of adolescents facing resultant financial hardship.

This is the first such study which reports the belief structures of adolescent impulse shoppers versus adults.

This study aims to enhance the understanding of impulse buying in grocery stores, where such purchases are pervasive and consumers face greater decision fatigue and diminished willpower than in more frequently examined retail environments. The intent is to demonstrate the influence of variables known to affect impulse buying in other environments on grocery shopping behavior, identify and profile segments that vary along those constructs and reveal how those segment characteristics help to explain impulse buying differences.

A purposive sample of 234 grocery shoppers approached at the point of purchase in a metropolitan area in Northeastern USA completed scales for theoretically derived variables and reported on their impulse purchases.

Anxiety, perceived financial pressure (PFP), novelty/variety seeking and shopping enjoyment positively influenced, whereas need for cognition had a negative effect on impulse-purchase activity. Two distinct segments of impulse buyers emerged: anxious and innovative shoppers. Anxious shoppers were higher in anxiety, PFP and compulsive buying, whereas innovative shoppers had higher levels of need for cognition and novelty/variety seeking.

The evidence for the dominance of anxiety and novelty/variety seeking as key motivators of distinct segments of impulse buyers in grocery stores is unique to this study. Results yield new insight on tension between the effects of motivational variables on the immediate impulse buying decision and post-purchase evaluation and add precision to marketers’ efforts to encourage spontaneous in-store decision-making.

This study aims to expand the understanding of impulse buying behavior by looking further into the role of culture in cross-cultural contexts.

A cross-cultural questionnaire was administered across three countries, namely, Sweden, Turkey and Vietnam.

Culture impacts impulse buying behavior of subjects with different cultural backgrounds. However, the findings also indicate that other factors may affect impulse buying behavior.

The cultural role on impulse buying was brought up by a few researchers in the literature, but Hofstede’s model of four cultural dimensions and their relationship to impulse buying behavior is tested for the first time in the literature across three different countries: Sweden, Turkey and Vietnam, which, respectively, represent northern Europe, southern Europe/a part of West Asia and South East Asia.

Integrating the two‐system (reflective vs. impulsive) model and the “stimulus‐organism‐response” framework, the purpose of this paper is to construct and empirically test a model that examines online impulse buying as a phenomenon triggered by system design factors.

A laboratory experimental design with a 2×2 full factorial design involving 151 undergraduate students was used to validate the effects of system design stimuli on online impulse buying. Interactivity and vividness, two design factors, were manipulated and a fictitious VCD movie store was created, with four storefronts representing each combination of treatments.

A compelling and sociable virtual experience as conceptualized with telepresence and social presence has a significant effect on buying impulses over and above traditional marketing/product stimuli. Such virtual experience can be created through the usage of interactive and vivid website features. Furthermore, cognition positively moderates the relationship between buying impulse and the actual purchasing behavior.

The findings provide valuable guidance in website design that can stimulate online impulse buying. The results also indicate the importance of providing cognitive intervention at the purchasing stage.

A significant extension of the “stimulus‐organism‐response” framework is to introduce presence as the system stimulus that captures the overall virtual experience and to specify the associated design features; i.e. interactivity and vividness. By incorporating the two‐system model, this study offers a theoretical underpinning of the role of cognitive processing in impulse buying.