Abstract
Social attachment can explain well the bond between users and social media, but existing research lacks measures of social attachment scales. To this end, this study takes attachment theory as the basis for scale development. On the basis of the development of multidimensional scales for adult, brand, and local attachment, it combines existing relevant studies on social attachment, selects three representative social media such as TikTok, WeChat, and MicroBlog as theoretical samples, explores the concept and structure of social attachment, and develops a social attachment scale through qualitative interviews and open-ended questionnaires. This study applied SPSS 24.0 and Mplus 7.0 to test the social attachment scale. The findings reveal that social attachment consists of three constructs: social connection, social dependence and social identity, and the scale possesses high reliability and validity. This study has developed and validated a social attachment scale in the context of social software use, realizing a quantitative study of social attachment and providing a basis for future empirical research related to social attachment.
Highlights
In recent years, with the rapid development and in-depth application of the new round of information technology, as well as the comprehensive popularity and flourishing of local social media, a boom in theoretical research around the theme of attachment relationship between users and local social media has begun to emerge, becoming a valuable and theoretically constructive theme (Chen et al, 2020; Yang et al, 2021a)
Reliability and Validity of Social Attachment Based on a review of previous literature and qualitative interviews with social media users, this study extends the application of attachment theory to social media use contexts and develops and validates a measurement scale for social attachment
The results of the exploratory factor analysis show that the theoretical structure of the Social Attachment Scale is a good fit for the actual data obtained; individuals’ attachments to social media in the context of social media use are mainly in the areas of social bonding, social dependence, and social identity
Summary
With the rapid development and in-depth application of the new round of information technology, as well as the comprehensive popularity and flourishing of local social media, a boom in theoretical research around the theme of attachment relationship between users and local social media has begun to emerge, becoming a valuable and theoretically constructive theme (Chen et al, 2020; Yang et al, 2021a). This study is based on the strong emotional relationship between users and social media, i.e., the phenomenon of continuous use behavior selecting representative users as interviewees, and through deep mining of data with a view to discovering and revealing the concepts and constructs of social attachment, which is a typical process of generating from phenomena to theory, and is suitable for scale development using rooting theory (Charmaz, 2009; Zhang and Yang, 2018). These items are to be retained in the study for their entirety
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
