The effects of negative information-related incidents on social media discontinuance intention: Evidence from SEM and fsQCA

Abstract

Social media have experienced a decline in their number of users. Understanding the antecedents of users’ discontinuance intention can help social media platforms in mitigating them. It is necessary to enrich the theoretical account of social media discontinuance intention from the aspect of negative information-related incidents. With this realization, underpinned by stimulus–organism–response (SOR) framework, the current study examined the interrelationships of negative information-related incidents, social media fatigue, perceived information overload, and social media discontinuance intention. The proposed hypotheses were verified by analyzing the responses of 328 Weibo users through structural equation modeling (SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). According to the SEM results, all negative-related information incidents can explain perceived information overload and social media fatigue, which in turn lead to discontinuance intention. The fsQCA findings also confirmed the significance of discontinuance intention determinants and provided the configurations that enhanced discontinuance intention. These findings can assist social media managers in developing unique strategies to address the specific needs of social media users.