Differences in the Reasons of Intermittent versus Permanent Discontinuance in Social Media: An Exploratory Study in Weibo

Differences in the Reasons of Intermittent versus Permanent Discontinuance in Social Media: An Exploratory Study in Weibo

Hilton Waikoloa Village, Hawaii

Discontinued usage (or discontinuance) of social media has aroused extensive interests among researchers and practitioners. Existing research tends to view discontinuance as permanent, but pays little attention to intermittent discontinuance wherein individuals stop using a social medium for a certain period of time but eventually restart using afterwards. Specifically, little is known about the commonalities and differences in reasons underlying permanent and intermittent discontinuance. Addressing this research gap, this paper reports an exploratory field study using qualitative data collected by interviewing 96 users with discontinuance experiences in Weibo, a popular Chinese microblogging platform. Results reveal four categories of reasons for discontinuance: user-, context-, function- and content-related. Comparative analysis shows that user discontinuance because of context-related factors is more likely to be intermittent, while user discontinuance due to function- and content-related factors are more likely to be permanent; results for user-related factors are complicated. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

https://aisel.aisnet.org/hicss-51/cl/e-business_transformation/3