Social Media Engagement Theory: Exploring the Influence of User Engagement on Social Media Usage

Business models that rely on social media and user-generated content have shifted from the more traditional business model, where value for the organization is derived from the one-way delivery of products and/or services, to the provision of intangible value based on user engagement. This research builds a model that hypothesizes that the user experiences from social interactions among users, operationalized as personalization, transparency, access to social resources, critical mass of social acquaintances, and risk, as well as with the technical features of the social media platform, operationalized as the completeness, flexibility, integration, and evolvability, influence user engagement and subsequent usage behavior. Using survey responses from 408 social media users, findings suggest that both social and technical factors impact user engagement and ultimately usage with additional direct impacts on usage by perceptions of the critical mass of social acquaintances and risk.