Determinants and consequences of Facebook feature use

Abstract

Despite explosive growth in the number of Facebook users, little research has investigated the use of different Facebook features. Thus, this study explored what motivates people to use various Facebook features as well as the social impact of using the website itself. Users with experience in both social interaction and social game features offered by Facebook were invited to participate in a survey. Our proposed research model was evaluated using the partial least-squares (PLS) method. Results show that social needs, enjoyment needs, and trend-following significantly influence the use of the social interaction features on Facebook, while immersion needs and achievement needs significantly influence the use of social games associated with the website. Interestingly, we found that different clusters of individuals have different sets of motivations. Furthermore, both social interaction features and social game features have positive correlations with social ties.