671948- 1 - USES AND GRATIFICATIONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ...

Picazo-Vela and Cruz-Sandoval Pinterest: Uses and Gratifications of Social Media Sites

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USES AND GRATIFICATIONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA SITES: THE CASE OF

PINTEREST

Sergio Picazo-Vela. Departamento de Administración de Empresas, Universidad de las Américas

Puebla, Sta. Catarina Mártir, Cholula, Puebla, México, +52 (222) 229-2202,

[email protected]

Judith Cruz- Sandoval, Departamento de Mercadotecnia, Universidad de las Américas Puebla,

Sta. Catarina Mártir, Cholula, Puebla, México, +52 (222) 229-2210

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

Nowadays people are using Social Media Sites (SMSs) as a new way of staying in touch with

each other. SMSs are very popular, and it is common that one person have active accounts in

many of them, for example: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google +, Pinterest, Flicker, etc.

Although the function of SMSs is being a platform that allows interchanging content and

creating a social group, the specific characteristics of each SMSs bring different experiences to

members. Some SMSs specialize in short messages other in professional contacts, etc. Pinterest

is an online board that allows people sharing images they find on the Web. In the last year the

number of members of Pinterest has grown considerably, being the number of female members

bigger than the number of male members, maybe indicating a better identification with the

female public. This study will use the Uses and Gratifications Theory as a framework to

understand the members’ motivations for using Pinterest.

Keywords: Social media, uses and gratifications theory, gender differences, Pinterest

INTRODUCTION

Since its creation the Web has impacted how people communicate and share information.

Although at the beginning of its evolution Web pages were only used to share information and

users had not possibility of interacting with web pages, the number of web pages grew in a very

important way. New advances of Web resulted in the possibility of users interacting with web

pages, this is call Web 2.0. Web 2.0 facilitates the creation of new applications like blogs, wikis,

and social networks (Grabner-Kräuter, 2009).

Social Media Sites (SMSs) are very popular among Internet users. The number of SMSs has

been increasing during the last years. We can find several examples of SMSs such as: Facebook,

Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+. The number of users enrolled at this kind of websites has been

increasing at very important rates with Facebook having more than a billion million active users

at April 2013 (Facebook, 2013), Twitter having 500 million users, and Pinterest having 12

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


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million monthly unique visitors (Pinterest, 2013). Although their primarily functions are

basically the same, users find them interesting and join at many of them.

In this study we will use the Uses and Gratifications Theory to understand motivations for using

Pinterest. Our proposed model is shown in Figure 1. We will also analyze motivational

differences in females’ and males’ use of Pinterest.

FIGURE 1. PROPOSED RESEARCH MODEL AND HYPOTHESES

This study is organized in six sections including this introduction. In section two, we discuss

previous studies about social media sites; we also elaborate the Uses and Gratifications Theory

that is the framework of the study. Next, we develop our theoretical arguments and hypotheses

for the proposed research model. This is followed by the procedures of testing the proposed

research model empirically. Section five reports the expected results of the study and the

discussion section includes a summary of findings, limitations and recommendations for further

research.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Social Media Sites

Boyd & Ellison (2007) define social network sites as “web-based services that allow individuals

to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of

other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of

connections and those made by others within the system” (p. 211).


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Though there are no formal classifications for the SMSs, we found one that adapts to this

research. Fred Cavazza (2012) divides social media into 6 groups: publishing, sharing, playing,

networking, buying and localization.

Publishing networks like Wikipedia, allow people to create content and modify it; sharing

platforms let members distribute and share videos, pictures, products, links, music or documents;

playing pages for online games; networking is for meeting new people or keeping in touch and

for professional networks; buying pages offer the possibility of e-commerce and are also

intended for sharing customers’ opinions about products; localization is mainly used through

mobile devices which allow you to show where you are, upcoming events and maps.

FIGURE 2. SOCIAL MEDIA LANDSCAPE (Cavazza, 2012)

Social media sites have been studied from different perspectives: use of Social Media Sites (e.g.

Clark & Roberts, 2010), social networks and trust (e.g. Grabner-Kräuter, 2009), cross-cultural

impact on social networking sites (Vitkauskaite, 2010), corporate responsibilities in social media

(Chen, 2009), and Social Networking: the business case of social networking (Wilson, 2009)

among others.

Uses and Gratifications Theory

The Uses and Gratifications theory (UGT) has been used since the 1940’s to explain how people

use mass media in order to fulfill their needs and wants. At the beginning UGT was used to deal

with the consumption of radio and newspapers and through the decades UGT has been applied to

different media, adapting its methodology to new forms of communication such as the internet.


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Early studies were basically exploratory and tried to classify the audience responses into

meaningful categories (Wimmer & Dominick, 1999). For example, research conducted during

1940s didn’t search for links between gratifications obtained and the psychological or

sociological origins of the satisfied needs, they only studied why people engaged in such

behavior (Ruggiero, 2000).

During the following decades, researchers identified and operationalized social and

psychological variables considered by Wimmer & Dominick (1999) as the precursors of various

forms of consumption of gratifications. Mendelsohn (1964) in his study on how people listened

to the radio, identified 7 main functions of this medium: companionship, bracketing the day,

changing mood, counteracting loneliness or boredom, providing news and information, allowing

vicarious participation in events and social interaction (Ruggiero, 2000).

During the following decades, UGT covered other media such as television, magazines, video

games and more recently, social media.

In order to develop a proper and concise methodology for the UGT, Lundberg and Hulten (cited

in Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1973) described five elements that they call “Uses and

Gratifications Model”.

1. The main statement of the UGT is that media users are active and therefore, seek those

specific media that can satisfy their needs (Katz et al., 1973). The authors also present the

idea that the origins of these social and psychological needs lead to different forms of

media exposure resulting in needed gratifications and other consequences.

2. UGT cannot establish a cause- effect result since the choice lies in any given media user.

3. Due to the vast array of media, there’s always a strong competition among them for the

audience attention, causing a diminishment in the attention span dedicated to each one of

them.

4. Audiences can recognize their motives for media consumptions and therefore supply that

data themselves.

5. Whenever research is conducted, value judgments must be suspended.

While researchers where trying to establish an interrelationship between the gratifications

individuals sought in media and the gratifications they obtained from each of them, those two

variables weren’t fully operationalized until Palmgreen & Rayburn (1985) cleared the concept

and established what they called the GS-GO Model, (Gratifications Sought – Gratifications

Obtained). Gratification is simply defined as a source of satisfaction or pleasure, but in terms of

marketing, it expands its meaning to “need fulfillment, pleasure/displeasure, expectation-

performance interactions, evaluation of the purchase/ consumption experience, evaluation of the

benefits of consumption, comparison of actual with ideal outcomes, and the attribute

‘deficit/surplus’ obtained from the purchase” (Oliver, 1981 p.27). The evolution of UGT

research is presented in Table 1, which summarizes some relevant studies.


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TABLE 1. EXAMPLE OF STUDIES THAT USED UGT IN DIFFERENT MEDIA

Author(s)/ Year Media Uses and gratifications

obtained

Rubin (1981) Television

Information, escape, passing

time, entertainment,

companionship

Rayburn, Palmgreen and

Acker (1984)

Television

Entertainment, exciting,

human quality, information I

can trust

Papacharissi, Z., & Rubin,

A. M. (2000)

Social networks Interpersonal utility, pass

time, information seeking,

entertainment and

convenience

Sheldon (2008) Social networks

Relationship maintenance,

passing time, virtual

community, entertainment,

coolness, companionship

Park et al. (2009) Social networks

Socializing, entertainment,

self-status and information

Though these aspects aim to explain the purchase experience they can also be applied to media

consumption since they are considered products and the source of satisfaction. Therefore, UGT

also focuses on the motivations individuals uncover while using media, the various factors that

may influence motives and outcomes from media-related behaviors (Papacharissi, 2002).

At the beginning of this century, with the birth of social media, a new research perspective for

the UGT was born, this new media showed characteristics never present before in the other

media, such as the creation of content and the ability to share it instantly. In this regard, UGT

usually considers two categories for media gratifications: process and content. Process

gratifications emerge from the activity itself of surfing the internet, whereas content

gratifications arise from acquiring information (Kayahara & Wellman, 2007). A third

gratification, exclusive to the Social Media is Social gratification (Papacharissi & Rubin, 2000;

Song, Larose, Eastin, & Lin, 2004).

According to Miller (1996) online activity is motivated by the need for interaction, entertainment

and escape. This may include chatrooms, e-mail and of course SMSs such as Facebook, Twitter,

Pinterest or YouTube. Furthermore, Papacharissi and Rubin (2000) found that Social Interactions

were the only way to determine internet usage.

These social interactions can be different from one social media to another, since social media

can be classified in groups according to its purpose, Facebook would be considered as a social

network, Twitter as a microblogging system and Pinterest as a content share media. Therefore

one would presume that the characteristics of each of them determine the particular GS and GO.


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Smock, Ellison, Lampe and Wohn (2011) developed a particularly interesting perspective,

arguing that people do not seek gratifications for the entire site but to what they call “unbundled

subsets of site features”. This means that even though a site like Facebook that offers media

sharing, information, chat, updates, news, etc., is only utilized by a person for few or even for

only one of its characteristics.

Following this line of research, Karnik, Oakley, Venkatanathan, Spiliotopoulos and Nisi (2013),

explored the uses and gratifications of a music video sharing group on Facebook, getting as

result four main uses and gratifications: contribution, discovery, social interaction and

entertainment, supporting Smock’s thesis that the nature of the media shape the motivations that

drive its use.

THEORY DEVELOPMENT

Motives for Using Pinterest

The basic proposition of uses and gratifications theory is that gratifications sought explain

individual media exposure (LaRose & Eastin, 2004). Researchers along the time have been using

the theory in different areas, so they have expanded the list of gratifications. The list of

gratifications includes: entertainment, interaction, information, pass time, aesthetic experience,

interpersonal communication, interactive, economic control, problem solving, persuading others,

status seeking, personal insight, virtual community, and coolness among others (e.g. Karnik et

al., 2013; Ko, Cho, & Roberts, 2005; Papacharissi & Rubin, 2000; Park et al., 2009; Rayburn II

et al., 1984; Sheldon, 2008; Song et al., 2004)

Based on the specific characteristics of Pinterest, this study proposes that there are five main

motivations for using Pinterest: entertainment, interaction, information, pass time, and aesthetic

experience. Social media use measures the amount of Pinterest use and the duration of Pinterest

use as well as the frequency of updating the Pinterest boards (Sheldon, 2008). Entertainment

speaks of enjoyment of Pinterest use as well as people’s lifestyle and the things they are

interested in (Hemmah, 2009). Social interaction expresses motivations of people who may visit

Pinterest to exchange ideas, communicate with friends or interact with other people (Ko, Cho &

Roberts, 2005). Information –seeking- is driven by people’s desire to increase awareness and

knowledge of one’s self, others, and the world (Shao, 2009) and in terms of social media,

Bowman and Willis (2003) state than information seeking is also the process of learning how to

make sense of things from their peers on just about any subject. The aesthetic experience is

related to the design of the Pinterest platform itself and its relation to agreeable and emotional

experiences (Song et al, 2004). Finally, the pass time construct, also called “killing time” by

Dion Hoe-Lian Goh et al (2012) refers to the willingness of the user to seek content whenever

they have free time, or create content when they couldn’t find anything else to do.

We expect that people with high degree of these motivations are more likely to stay longer on

Pinterest. So we hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 1: Social Media entertainment gratification will have a positive effect on Social

Media Usage


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Hypothesis 2: Social Media social interaction gratification will have a positive effect on Social

Media Usage

Hypothesis 3: Social Media information gratification will have a positive effect on Social Media

Usage

Hypothesis 4: Social Media pass time gratification will have a positive effect on Social Media

Usage

Hypothesis 5: Social Media aesthetic experience will have a positive effect on Social Media

Usage

Gender Differences

In the literature we can find studies that suggest that males and females differentiate in the way

they communicate in Internet. For example, Haferkamp et al. (2012) used a survey and content

analysis of a set of users profiles in a social networking site (StudiVZ) to identify gender

differences in self-presentation on the social networking site. Some of their findings include that

women use the SMS more for comparing themselves with others and to search for information;

and that men use the SMS to look at others people’s profiles to find friends.

In addition, Rose at al. (2012) analyzed a set of 300 Facebook profile pictures, and found

differences in terms of how males and females present themselves across a number of traits

selected to represent gender stereotypes (e.g. active, attractive, dependent, dominant,

independent, and sentimental). They compared Facebook profile pictures associated with male

and female subjects; among other findings, they found that Facebook profile pictures associated

with male rated higher for the trait active; they also found that Facebook profile pictures

associated with females subjects rated higher for the trait attractive.

In another study Sheldon (Sheldon, 2009) used a survey and focus group procedures to study the

motivational differences in females’ and males’ use of Facebook. She found that females’ and

males have different motivations for using Facebook.

These set of studies suggest that motivations for using social media sites are different for women

and men. The study of these differences is very interesting in the social media site analyzed in

this study: Pinterest, because the number of female users surpasses the number of male users. In

this study we hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 6: There are significant motivational differences in females’ and males’ use of

Pinterest.


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METHOD

A cross-sectional field survey will be conducted. Specifically, data will be collected from users

of Pinterest.

The online questionnaire was developed by adapting existing validated instruments with

necessary modifications in order to fit the objective of this study. Table 2 shows the constructs,

references, and the internal reliability of the scales used in this study. The online questionnaire

will be distributed to a set of users of Pinterest who agree to participate in the study. These users

will send the questionnaire to their followers, and will ask them to send the online questionnaire

to their followers. Only questionnaires filled by members of Pinterest will be considered in the

study.

TABLE 2 MEASUREMENT INSTRUMENTS AND INTERNAL RELIABILITY

Construct Reference Number of

items

Scale Cronbach’s

alpha

Social Media

Use Sheldon (2008) 1 Ordinal N/A

Entertainment Song et al.

(2004) 4

5-Point Likert

scale 0.87

Social-

interaction Ko et al. (2005) 4

5-Point Likert

scale 0.76

Information Papacharissi and

Rubin (2000) 5

5-Point Likert

scale 0.87

Aesthetic

experience

Song et al.

(2004) 5

5-Point Likert

scale 0.89

Pass time Sheldon (2008) 4 5-Point Likert

scale 0.83

Analysis of Data

The analysis of data will consist of three stages: descriptive data analysis, structural equation

modeling (SEM) analysis, and MANOVA analysis. SPSS 18 and AMOS 18 will be used in all

stages.

Descriptive Data Analysis

Characteristics of the sample will be included. These include sample size and demographics.

SEM Analysis

To test the hypotheses, we will use SEM. We will follow the two-step approach recommended

by (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988). Specifically, we will test the measurement model first followed

by testing the structural model.


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Measurement Model

To assess measurement model validity, we will evaluate goodness-of-fit and construct validity.

Goodness-of-fit indices are classified in three groups including absolute measures, incremental

measures and parsimony fit measures (Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson, & Tatham, 2006).

Specifically, we will assess goodness-of-fit using three to four fit indices recommended by (Hair

et al., 2006).

To assess construct validity, we will examine convergent and discriminant validity. To examine

convergent validity, we will analyze factors loadings, variance extracted, and reliability. To

access discriminant validity, we will compare the variance extracted percentages with the square

of the correlation estimate, variance extracted estimates should be greater than the squared

correlation estimate.

Structural Model

After the measurement model is validated, we will assess the structural model. Analysis of the

structural model will allow us to test the hypotheses. First, we will evaluate model fit. Next, we

will examine the individual parameter estimates that represent the hypotheses. Parameter

estimates should be statistically significant (i.e., >.05) and in the expected direction. Finally, we

will examine variance explained estimates for the endogenous constructs.

MANOVA Analysis

To analyze the motivational differences in females’ and males’ use of Pinterest we will perform

a multivariate analysis of variance.

RESULTS

We anticipate the goodness-of-fit indices of the measurement model and a successful

confirmatory factor analysis that will support the validity of the measurement model. Goodness-

of-fit will be assessed using chi-square value and goodness-of-fit indices as indicated earlier.

Once model fit is assessed, we will analyze the structural model to test the hypotheses. The five

paths between entertainment, social interaction, information, pass time, and aesthetic experience

and social media usage are expected to be positive and statistically significant, supporting

hypothesis H1 through H5. We expect that all the gratifications selected for this study will be

significant predictors of Pinterest’ use. In addition we will identify which ones are better

predictors of this use so we can develop a set of recommendations for improving the success of

the website.

From the MANOVA analysis we expect to find differences in females’ and males’ motivations

for using this social media site.


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DISCUSSION

Uses and gratifications theory have been useful when assessing patterns of media exposure

resulting in need gratifications. The study of the motivations of using Pinterest will allow us to

increase our understanding of what online customers are looking for in social media sites. This

study will also be useful to show that uses and gratifications theory continues relevant for

studying new media.

Some of the limitations of the study include that the use of snow ball sampling may result in a

sample not representative of Pinterest users. So in future studies we recommend the use of other

data collection techniques. Another limitation of the study is that the gender differences analyzed

are limited to the case of Pinterest, results may be different in other social media sites.

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