Weather Conditions and User Engagement Behaviors on Government Social Media Platforms

Authors

Jiaming Fang, School of Management and Economics, University of Electronic Science and TechnologyFollow
Zhihui Shi, University of Electronic Science and Technology of ChinaFollow
Qian Su, University of Information TechnologyFollow

Abstract

Although governments are increasingly turning to social media to engage the public, studying relationships between macro-level contextual factors (e.g., weather conditions) and individual-level social media participation is scant. In this paper, we, based on panel data from 412 government WeChat official accounts of 21 cities in China, show that people are more likely to participate（view, like or add a comment） in government WeChat official accounts in sunny days relative to cloudy days, whereas they are less likely to engage in rainy days. These effects are especially salient in the low intensity levels of engagement. Also, the sunny weather effect is stronger for the high intimate WeChat accounts.

Recommended Citation

Fang, Jiaming; Shi, Zhihui; and Su, Qian, "Weather Conditions and User Engagement Behaviors on Government Social Media Platforms" (2020). PACIS 2020 Proceedings. 246.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/pacis2020/246