Abstract
This article aims at investigating the influence mechanism of central route factors which guided by negative emotions and peripheral route factors that reflect social environment on the willingness of social media users to disclose negative emotions. By applying the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), combined with use and satisfaction theory, a theoretical model to investigate social media users' willingness to disclose negative emotions is developed and an empirical analysis is conducted. The findings indicate that disclosure of negative emotions in social media is the result of joint decision-making through dual (personal and social environmental) persuasive paths and is mediated by two psychological needs, in which need for negative emotional expression shows a positive effect while need for impression management exhibits a negative effect. Among the central route factors, the intensity of negative emotions gives positive impact on need for negative emotional expression and negatively affects the need for impression management, in turn promoting negative emotional disclosure intention, while the negative emotion regulation ability has the opposite effect. As the peripheral route factor, social support positively affects the need for negative emotional expression, negatively affects the need for impression management, and finally lead to negative emotional disclosure intention. The influence of emotional support is relatively more significant. Limitations and implications for both research and practice are discussed.
Recommended Citation
Chen, Jun and Zhu, Aiyi, "Understanding Social Media Users’ Intentions to Disclose Negative Emotions - Dual Persuasion Paths Perspective" (2022). WHICEB 2022 Proceedings. 24.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/whiceb2022/24