A social cognitive theory of Internet uses and gratifications: toward a new model of media attendance.

The addition of the Internet to the electronic media environment has renewed interest in the question of media attendance: the factors that explain and predict individual exposure to the media. Much of the research has been carried out by followers of the uses and gratifications tradition, who anticipated the medium as an exemplar of active media selection that could further validate the core tenets of that paradigm (Morris & Ogan, 1996; Newhagen & Rafaeli, 1996; Ruggerio, 2000). Instead, Internet research has introduced new conceptual and operational approaches and new variables that now challenge some of the basic assumptions, procedures, and findings of uses and gratifications. However, these findings have yet to be integrated into a comprehensive model of media attendance. Moreover, these relationships have been explored among college student samples and must now be extended to the general online population. The present research proposes and tests a model of media attendance inspired by Bandura's (1986) Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) that builds upon the conventional uses and gratifications approach by clarifying important explanatory constructs and identifying new ones.

Uses and Gratifications Meet the Internet

Numerous studies (e.g. Charney & Greenberg, 2001; Chou & Hsiao, 2000; Dimmick, Kline & Stafford, 2000; Eighmey & McCord, 1998; Ferguson & Perse, 2000; Flanagin & Metzger, 2001; Kaye, 1998; Korgaonkar & Wolin, 1999; LaRose, Mastro & Eastin, 2001; Lin, 1999; Papacharissi & Rubin, 2000; Parker & Plank, 2000; Perse & Greenberg-Dunn, 1998; Song, LaRose, Eastin & Lin, 2004; Stafford & Stafford, 2001) have applied uses and gratifications to the Internet. Collectively, these studies upheld one of the model's basic propositions (Palmgreen, Wenner & Rosengren, 1985), that gratifications sought explain individual media exposure. However, many Internet-related studies have also reconfirmed a basic weakness of uses and gratifications: They did not explain media exposure very well. Consistent with uses and gratifications studies of other media (cf. Palmgreen, Wenner, & Rosengren, 1985), the Internet studies that hewed most closely to the uses and gratifications tradition have explained less than 10% of the variance in Internet usage from gratifications (e.g., Ferguson & Perse, 2000; Kaye, 1998; Papacharissi & Rubin, 2000; Parker & Plank, 2000).

That the Internet is in many ways a unique medium has not escaped the attention of researchers. The time-honored list of gratifications derived from early television studies (notably, Greenberg, 1974; Rubin, 1983) has been expanded to explore unique facets of the Internet medium. For example, Papacharissi and Rubin (2000) proposed interpersonal communication gratifications, recognizing that communication functions like e-mail and chatrooms are common modes of Internet usage. Korgaonkar and Wolin (1999) found dimensions of information, interactive, and economic control. Other new gratification dimensions have included: problem solving, persuading others, relationship maintenance, status seeking, and personal insight (Flanagin & Metzger, 2001); Song et al.'s (2004) virtual community gratification; Charney and Greenberg's (2001) coolness, sights and sounds, career, and peer identity factors; and Stafford and Stafford's (2001) search and cognitive factors. Stafford and Stafford (2001) achieved a modest increase (to 21%) in the variance explained in Internet usage, mostly from the addition of a search factor (i.e., that accessing search engines was an important motivation for using the Internet) to more conventional information seeking and entertainment gratifications.

Others innovated with conceptual and operational definitions, creating what might be called prospective, or expected, gratifications. These ask respondents what they expect from the Internet in the future as opposed to those that they seek in the present or have obtained in the past. This is a departure from the gratifications sought/gratifications obtained (GS/GO) formulation that has long guided uses and gratifications (Palmgreen et al., 1985). Studies that have employed prospective measures (e.g., Charney & Greenberg, 2001; LaRose, Mastro, & Eastin, 2001; Lin, 1999) have consistently doubled, tripled, or quadrupled the amount of variance explained in Internet attendance behavior compared to conventional approaches.

A Social Cognitive Perspective of Uses and Gratifications

Prospective gratification measures were initially an innovative means of understanding the medium before it was widely distributed in the population (e.g., Lin, 1999). However, they are also consistent with a view of media attendance derived from Bandura's (1986, 1989) Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), which offers a theoretical explanation for the often-observed (for example, Papacharissi & Rubin, 2000) empirical relationship between media gratifications and media usage. SCT is familiar to media scholars in its earlier incarnation as Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1977), as a theory of media effects. However, SCT is a broad theory of human behavior that may be applied to media attendance as well. SCT posits reciprocal causation among individuals, their behavior, and their environment. Within SCT, behavior is an observable act and the performance of behavior is determined, in large part, by the expected outcomes of behavior, expectations formed by our own direct experience or mediated by vicarious reinforcement observed through others. Thus, media usage is overt media consumption behavior (usage of the Internet in the present case), and it is determined by the expected outcomes that follow from consumption. Since expected gratification outcomes may be formulated from vicarious observation of others' behavior (Eastin, 2002) they can explain consumption both among prospective future users of the Internet (as in Lin, 1999) and current users.

Uses and gratifications can be understood in socio-cognitive terms. Where uses and gratification researchers have explored gratifications, SCT proposes expected outcomes and where uses and gratifications researchers posit needs, SCT proposes behavioral incentives. Expected positive outcomes of Internet exposure should cause further exposure. What people have gotten in the past from the Internet is an important part of the basis for their current expectations about it. However, expectations are also shaped by vicarious learning, based on observations of the experiences of others, and also self-efficacy (see below). However, it is the current expectation about outcomes of behavior that best determines behavior.

The expected outcomes are organized around six basic types of incentives for human behavior: novel sensory, social, status, monetary, enjoyable activity, and self-reactive incentives (Bandura, 1986, pp. 232-240) and these are theoretically constructed rather than statistical[y derived from exploratory factor analysis as in the uses and gratifications tradition. An analysis of these categories against Internet gratifications (LaRose et al., 2001) revealed that conventional uses and gratifications research underemphasized status and monetary incentives that had significant positive correlations with Internet usage (see a]so Charney & Greenberg, 2001; Flanagin & Metzger, 2001; Krgaonkar & Wolin, 1999). When expected outcome measures reflecting the full range of these incentive categories were subjected to exploratory factor analysis, a "new" virtual community dimension was uncovered that drew heavily on the status incentives lacking in conventional uses and gratifications research (Song et al., 2004). Despite few differences (notably the inclusion of measures of habit strength in gratification dimensions), other SCT incentive categories parallel conventional uses and gratifications dimensions. Activity incentives, predicated on the desire to take part in enjoyable activities, correspond to the entertainment gratifications. Self-evaluative incentives, which involve attempts to regulate dysphoric moods, parallel "pass time" or "boredom" gratifications. Novel sensory incentives include the search for novel information, and they are similar to information seeking gratifications. Social incentives stemming from rewarding interactions with others correspond to social gratifications.

However, the gratifications sought-gratifications obtained formulation (Palmgreen, et al, 1985) does not precisely match the concept of outcome expectations, or the subjective probability that a particular outcome will be obtained for future behavior. Gratifications sought reflect wished-for outcomes (e.g., I hope to find an e-mail from home) but not necessarily expectations of achieving the outcome through our present behavior (but the folks e-mailed yesterday, so I don't expect one today). Comparing gratifications sought with those obtained reflects the outcomes achieved in the past but not necessarily the likelihood that they will be repeated in the present by engaging in further media consumption. Rather, SCT assumes that outcome expectations are continually updated as a result of self-observation of our own experience and (vicarious) observation of the behavioral consequences that occur to others.