Clicking, Assessing, Immersing, and Sharing: An Empirical Model of User Engagement with Interactive Media

Abstract

This article explicates the concept of user engagement by synthesizing a disparate body of scholarship, and suggests a measurement and a structural model for empirically capturing the meaning and process of user engagement, specifically in the context of interactive media. A second-order confirmatory factor analysis of data from two experiments (N = 263) shows that four attributes-physical interaction, interface assessment, absorption, and digital outreach-together constitute a valid and reliable operationalization of the concept of user engagement. A structural equation model reveals that greater amount of physical interaction with the interface and a more positive assessment of the interface predict cognitive absorption with the content, which in turn is associated with greater behavioral intention to manage and socially distribute the content. In addition, predictive validity tests show that the four subscales are predictors of attitudinal and learning outcomes.

Consumer engagement on social media: Evidence from small retailers

“…The level of consumers’ participation and attention also affects the form of engagement: greater attention equates to a higher level of engagement (Barger et al, ; Lee et al, ). This is supported by Oh et al () who tested a model showing that sharing content (in our case, ‘commenting’) is a heightened form of engagement, above simply interfacing with social media (in our case, ‘liking’). In this regard, more ‘comments’ would represent a higher level of engagement than ‘likes’ because posting a comment requires a higher level of attention and involvement with the post than ‘liking’ or ‘sharing’ (Harrigan, Evers, Miles, & Daly, ; Hollebeek et al, ; Phang, Zhang & Sutanto, 2013; de Vries, Gensler, & Leeflang, ).…”

“…‘likes’, ‘comments’, ‘re‐tweets’ and ‘follows’) from followers on different social media platforms. Engagement, for the purposes of this study, involves interaction with posts on social media and the level of participation in the post (see Oh et al, ). These metrics (‘likes’, ‘comments’, ‘re‐tweets’ and ‘follows’) are commonly used by industry and are said to be more granular than number of followers (Lee, Hosanagar, & Nair, ).…”

“…Indeed, Alalwan () states that social media ads empower customers to have more engagement through ‘liking’, ‘sharing’ and ‘commenting’. Consumer engagement is considered to be a significant factor in measuring the impact and effectiveness of social media marketing efforts in an organisational context (Liu, Lee, Liu, & Chen, ; Oh et al, ; Schivinski et al, ).…”

Antecedents and learning outcomes of online news engagement

“…Compared to the group who did not interact with the slider, these participants evaluated the website and its message more positively, and indicated increased levels of cognitive absorption, suggesting greater engagement. In another article, Oh et al () constructed an engagement model comprised of physical interactions with websites, interface assessments, cognitive absorption, and interactivity using a National Geographic story. They concluded, “user engagement with peripheral cues belonging to the media system or interfaces could trigger more systematic user engagement with content ” (p. 19).…”

“…In the present study, the news stories were delivered in text, audio, and video formats, but did not include additional interactive features, and participants were not required to perform any tasks beyond reading, viewing, or listening to the news stories. It was hypothesized that, in the absence of interactivity, media format would influence participants' level of engagement (Chapman et al, ; Oh & Sundar, ; Oh et al, ), and specifically, that video would be more engaging than audio, and audio would be more engaging than either text formats (Figure ):…”