Impacts of Gratifications on Consumers' Emotions and Continuance Use Intention: An Empirical Study of Weibo in China

Recently, several studies on information systems have applied the Uses and Gratifications theory to investigate individual use of social media, and have reported the role of different gratifications in predicting users' behaviors. However, no attention was given to the influence of these gratifications on users' emotional states (satisfaction and emotional commitment). To address this research gap, the current study integrates the Uses and Gratifications theory and the Stimulus-Organism-Response theory to provide a theoretical background for the impacts of gratification on consumers' emotional states and continuance use intention. The study has proposed a theoretical model that was tested on data collected from 252 Sina Weibo users in China. The results revealed that social gratification is the most important factor influencing users' satisfaction and emotional commitment. In addition, we report the roles that user satisfaction and emotional state provide in predicting users' continuance intention. The theoretical and practical implications of the proposed theory are also discussed.