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This paper seeks to demonstrate the importance of uses and gratifications theory to social media. By applying uses and gratifications theory, this paper will explore and discuss the uses and gratifications that consumer receive from using social media. This paper seeks to provide a better and more comprehensive understanding of why consumers use social media.

Exploratory study was conducted. 25 in‐depth interviews were conducted with individuals who use social media.

This study identified ten uses and gratifications for using social media. The ten uses and gratifications are: social interaction, information seeking, pass time, entertainment, relaxation, communicatory utility, convenience utility, expression of opinion, information sharing, and surveillance/knowledge about others.

Limitations are small sample size. Research implications are that uses and gratifications theory has specific relevance to social media and should be given more prominence. Uses and gratifications theory helps explain the many and varied reasons why consumers use social media.

This paper helps organizations to understand why consumers use social media and what gratifications they receive from social media.

This paper makes the contribution that uses and gratifications theory has specific relevance and should be given more prominence within the area of social media. This paper also provides a rich and vivid understanding of why consumers use social media.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of social media and its impact on information search, communication with a company, and purchase and re-purchases of products and services. Using use and gratification theory as a starting point, it also examines the impact of satisfaction of use of social media in the process of purchasing and re-purchasing products and services.

An online survey was conducted with 444 participants, and the data were analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling technique to observe the effects between the variables of social media use, search information, communication with the company, purchase, re-purchase and satisfaction of use of social media.

The results reflect how the use of social media generates significant rewards that significantly impact the search for information and the communication with the company. The data also show how communication with the company has an impact on the purchase and re-purchase of products and services. Finally, it was empirically confirmed that the gratification received by users through social media use impacts satisfaction with social media use.

The results contribute to how social media impacts alternative evaluations through the gratification of user needs, resulting in motives and behaviors leading to the purchase of goods and services, as established by Use and Gratification Theory. In its contributions to the Academy, Use and Gratification Theory (U&G) explains why individuals use and share information using social media. First, it justifies the purchase and re-purchase of products and services due to user satisfaction according to users’ experience using social media. Second, it presents a vision of how the use of social media is a significantly important result in the gratification of consumer needs.

Citizen satisfaction with the government is a longstanding and continuous concern in public administration. However, past research did not investigate the effect on satisfaction with the government in the context of mobile government (m-government). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how the social benefits of citizens using m-government affect their satisfaction with the government.

Grounded in the uses and gratifications theory (UGT), the authors suggest that the satisfaction in m-government should be constructed in terms of the satisfaction with m-government and the satisfaction with the government. The research model of citizen satisfaction in the context of m-government is tested through partial least squares (PLS) (SmartPLS 2.0) based on data collected from a survey study in China.

The results indicate that the three important social benefits, e.g. convenience, transparency and participation, are positively associated with process gratification, whereas only convenience is positively associated with content gratification. The results suggest that both process gratification and content gratification are positively associated with citizen satisfaction with the government. Furthermore, the research suggests that process and content gratification have a mediating role, whereas compatibility has a moderating role.

This research provides insights to practitioners on how to facilitate citizen satisfaction by increasing citizens’ social benefits and improving process and content gratification.

This study contributes to the literature by offering a framework for analyzing the impact of citizens’ use of m-government on their satisfaction with the government. The work also contributes to UGT by categorizing user gratifications into process gratifications, content gratifications and citizen satisfaction with the government.

As the center of the fourth industrial revolution, artificial intelligence (AI) has marked its presence in various disciplines including the education field in the form of AI-powered learning applications. The purpose of this study is to build a research model capturing the relationships among use contexts, user gratification, attitude, learning performance and continuous intention to use an AI-powered English learning application.

Using the use and gratification theory, use contexts and the belief-attitude-intention theory, this paper uses a quantitative approach based on a survey method for data collection and structural equation modeling for analysis. A total of 478 students from an international university in Guangdong, China, participated in the survey after using Liulishuo for two weeks.

The results showed that perceived use contexts affected all variables associated with gratifications-obtained and gratification-opportunities. With the exception of social integrativeness, all other gratification-based factors significantly affected attitude. The attitude in turn significantly influenced learning performance and continuous use intention.

Mobile AI-powered learning applications are at the center of research on technology-enhanced learning in the age of media and technology convergence. The study is timely and contributes to the discussion of the roles of use context and gratifications on technology users’ attitudes and behavioral intentions.

As mobile augmented reality (AR) games enter the maturity stage, understanding how to improve players’ continuance use intention with mobile AR games is critical. Drawing upon the uses and gratifications (U&G) theory, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of four major gratifications – content, process, social and technology – and other factors on continuance intention to play mobile AR games.

Data collected from 280 Pokémon Go players were used to address research questions. Partial least squares method was employed to assess the relationships in the model and multigroup analysis was conducted based on survey participants’ demographics and their gaming experience.

Content gratification (i.e. catching Pokémon), process gratification (i.e. entertainment), game knowledge and achievement drive players’ continuance use intention. However, social and technology gratifications do not influence players’ continuance use intention. Multigroup analysis suggests that mobile AR game developers should capitalize on the fact that different types of gratifications prompt continuance use intention of different user segments in terms of demographics and experience in general mobile games and Pokémon Go.

The user behavior of mobile AR games has been studied at the early stage of the games, with less attention to variable continuance use intentions across different user segments. This paper attempts to fill the gap by extending the U&G theory to continuance use intention of mobile AR games at the maturity stage and further investigating the importance of player heterogeneity in continuance use intention with mobile AR games. The findings of this study contribute to the literature on U&G, continuance use intention and mobile AR games.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a robust framework for assessing motivations to use Twitter. Drawing on previous studies, diffusion of innovations, unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, and uses and gratifications frameworks were incorporated to capture the variety in Twitter gratifications.

This study explored the motivations to use Twitter through data mining and content analysis of #IUseTwitterBecause trending topic in Turkey. The sample was consisted of 4,465 tweets posted by 3,794 unique Twitter persona.

Findings revealed 13 distinct Twitter gratifications which were grouped under four main categories: content, process, social and technology. Process gratifications were found to be the strongest motives for using Twitter whereas content gratifications were the weakest. The current findings indicated that Turkish users engage with Twitter mostly for self-expression, escapism, and social interaction. Moreover, the study found a novel campaign gratification for using Twitter solely to make political or social agenda visible in the society.

The current study extends the previous literature on motivations in using social networking services from both analytical and methodological perspectives. The naturally occurring data and relatively large sample size in this study provides a deeper look into social media gratifications and yields more generalizable findings. Besides, this study contributes to the alleviation of conceptual confusions among the past social media gratification studies.

The purpose of this study is to compare the gratification sought and gratification obtained for cognitive needs from social media among information professionals in the limelight of uses and gratification theory. Cognitive needs are related to knowledge, acquiring information, comprehension etc., and gratification sought and gratification obtained are two distinct components of the uses and gratification theory.

For this quantitative research study, a self-administered survey questionnaire was used to collect data from the participants of the study. Sample of this study was 700 information professionals who are necessarily users of social media.

Finding of this study depicted that gratification obtained and gratification sought from social media for cognitive needs are different from each other, and information professionals need to revisit their social media use for cognitive needs.

The present study is limited to gratification sought and gratification obtained for cognitive needs among information professionals.

This study has determined that information professionals need to revisit their social media use for cognitive needs, as the obtained gratifications are different from gratification sought from social media.

Social media provides versatility of information in different forms and large numbers of information professionals are the users of social media around globe. Perceived use of social media for cognitive needs has been resulted into destructed gratifications. This study has brought the actual outcome of the use of social media to the audience so that they may rectify their social media use.

This study is a significant contribution for information professionals to review the gratifications sought and obtained from social media for cognitive needs. It has been established in this study that gratifications sought are significantly different from gratifications obtained from social media among information professionals.

This study combines uses and gratifications theory and flow theory to create an integrated model that predicts continuance intention to use and satisfaction with livestreaming services.

The proposed model was empirically evaluated using survey data collected from 304 users about their perceptions of livestream services.

The results indicate that gratifications such as entertainment, informativeness and sociability were all positively related to satisfaction. The authors find that flow mediates the impact of interactivity and telepresence on satisfaction. Notably, sociability gratification and satisfaction had a significant impact on a user's intention to continue to use livestreaming services and accounted for 77% of the variance.

The study adds to the body of knowledge by demonstrating the uses and gratifications theory and flow theory in live stream services. In addition, the findings may provide useful insights for live stream services streamers and marketers.

This study aims to investigate the gratifications driving the attitude and continuance use of mobile payment services in developing country context, such as Ghana. Also, the moderating effect of income and education on gratifications and attitude of users is explored.

Data was collected from conveniently sampled 361 users of mobile payment services in Ghana. A questionnaire, which mainly contains five-point Likert scale questions, was used to collect the data. The study adopted the Uses and Gratification (U&G) theory, where income and education were used as moderating factors. The data was analysed with SmartPLS for Structural Equation Modelling.

Among the other factors from the U&G theory, integrative, ease of use and usefulness gratifications were found to significantly influence attitude towards the use of mobile payment services in Ghana. In addition to this finding, user attitude significantly influences the continuance use intention of mobile payment services. Furthermore, the study revealed various effects of the moderating factors. These findings suggest that promoting mobile payment technology inclusiveness by creating a favourable environment would enhance the use of mobile payment services in Ghana.

Given that this study was conducted in Ghana, a developing country, it is difficult to generalize the results to encompass the developed economies. In future, similar research should compare the developed and developing economies by considering culture as a moderating effect.

This study intends to provide information on the gratifications that drive the attitude and continuance use of mobile payment services in Ghana. The findings seek to augment mobile money service providers’ capabilities by providing them with an understanding of user gratification experience on mobile payment services. Additionally, the study will serve as a guide to policymakers in the government, telecommunication companies and mobile banking providers, to improve customer intimacy and gratification through their user behaviour.

Previous studies on user gratification have primarily focussed on the functional benefits derived from mobile payments and how they influence the service’s adoption. This study has contributed to literature by considering both the functional and non-functional benefits of mobile payment in developing country context. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to consider income and education as moderating variables to study the gratification levels of mobile payment users in Ghana and among few in Africa.

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.”