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The generalizability of the present research is limited by the geographic scope of the sample. The sample contained disproportionately small representations of young people and males. As a one-shot survey study, the direction of causation cannot be established. Indeed, within SCT reciprocal causation is recognized. For example, self-efficacy is a precondition for successful performance of a behavior, but successful performance also increases self-efficacy.
Implications for Further Research
Internet usage was broadly defined. Future research might distinguish Internet applications (e.g., e-mail vs online chat), functions (e.g., entertainment vs news Web sites), or settings (e.g., work vs leisure). However, in keeping with the operational procedures recommended in SCT, it will be important to match the explanatory constructs (e.g., expected e-mail outcomes, e-mail self-efficacy, e-mail habits, etc.) to achieve satisfactory results.
Habit strength, deficient self-regulation, and self-efficacy might extend to other forms of media attendance. Many media consumption behaviors (e.g., tuning in the evening news) would seem to be habit-prone. While few mass media require skills as complex as the Internet, there are perhaps parallel media self-efficacy constraints. Anyone who has ever given up recording a favorite show because programming the recorder was "too much hassle" may be said to suffer from a self-efficacy deficit. Television addiction has been described (by Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002) in the same terms of behavioral addiction that underlie deficient self-regulation. Here, we found the construct useful in explaining media attendance in a normal population of media consumers; perhaps that would extend to other media as well.
The present research suggests new departures from uses and gratifications traditions. Redefining gratifications as expected outcomes may have merit on both conceptual and operational levels. Secondly, gratification dimensions from previous research may have neglected some potentially important variables, particularly the status that media attendance may confer. Third, habit strength appears to be a distinct construct from gratifications, as early conceptualizations (e.g., Palmgreen et al., 1985, p. 17) observed, but later research neglected.
More fundamentally, the present findings suggest that active selection of media that best meet personal needs is not the sole mechanism explaining media attendance. Active selection dominates when new media alternatives appear or when personal routines are disrupted. Self-efficacy beliefs about one's ability to utilize alternative media channels may also contribute to media selection. Thereafter, repeated consumption is increasingly habitual and automatic as we turn our attention elsewhere. Once habits are established, users no longer think through whether one alternative or another is a better way of obtaining a particular outcome. Users still monitor their overall level of Internet usage and apply self-reactive incentives to adjust the amount to appropriate levels, as defined by personal or social norms. But some users may lose the power to self-regulate, perhaps through a process of operant conditioning (cf. LaRose et al., 2003) to self-reactive outcomes, and in extreme cases they might develop a media dependency. SCT provides a framework for integrating uses and gratifications mechanisms with these competing influences on individual media attendance.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance, of the following students in collecting the data for this project: Mike Mackert, Sri Sukotjo, Yu-Chieh Lin, Jinhee Hong, Songyi Park, Wen-Ya Wu, Li-An Liu, Charintip Tungkittisuwan, Kuang-Chiu Huang.
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