Exploring Motives for Using Facebook: A Latent Profile Analysis

Abstract

People use Facebook from a variety of motives and literature is dominated by descriptive statistics and variableoriented approaches (e.g., regression). The aim of this paper is to extend previous research by adopting a person-oriented approach (i.e., LPA-latent profile analysis) and examine whether profiles of motivation can be identified. Two empirical studies were performed engaging Romanian university students (557 and 550, respectively). The LPA and mclust package version 5.3 were used to identify groups of students who share similar response patterns to multiple facets of motivation when using Facebook. The results of LPA revealed the presence of three profiles, reflecting different levels of motivations for using Facebook: low, moderate, and high. These profiles differed significantly from each other with respect to maintaining social relationships, extending social relationships, and information & collaboration. The results illustrate that maintaining social relations is the most important factor to create the profiles. Also, students in the high motivational profile reported more time spent on Facebook than those in the other two profiles.

What drives me to use TikTok: A latent profile analysis of users’ motives

“…The results of LPA yielded the presence of four profiles, overall low motives, overall medium motives, overall high motives, and escapist addiction and novelty motives. Consistent with previous research on motivations for using social media ( Cristescu and Balog, 2018 ), the current study revealed the former three profiles reflecting different levels of motivations: overall low, medium, and high. It is notable that the current study also yielded a fourth profile (namely the ‘escapist addiction and novelty motives profile’), which was characterized by high scores in escapist addiction and novelty, but low scores in socially rewarding self-presentation and trendiness.…”

“…The labeling of the profiles is based on the terminology of previous studies on motives for using Facebook profiles (e.g., Cristescu and Balog, 2018 ). Figure 1 shows the different profiles and their means for each TikTok use motive subscale.…”

“…This theory highlights that people use mass media to satisfy particular wants and aspirations ( Katz, 1959 ; Katz et al, 1973 ). Although this theory was created to explain how people use mass media, it is now frequently used to explain how people use social media, such as Facebook ( Nadkarni and Hofmann, 2012 ; Cristescu and Balog, 2018 ; Kowal et al, 2020 ; Raza et al, 2020 ), Tinder ( Sumter et al, 2017 ; Timmermans and De Caluwé, 2017 ), and Instagram ( Lee et al, 2015 ; Phua et al, 2017 ).…”