The Usage Behaviors, Motivations and Gratifications of Using User-Generated Media: The Case Study of Taiwan’s YouTube

Video sharing websites have become an indispensable online service to Internet users. We aim to investigate the relationships between motivations of using video-sharing websites, online reputation management, innovation orientation, and video-sharing website usage behaviors, and how these factors affect gratification obtained from video-sharing website usage. This study employs focus group interviews and online questionnaire surveys. The research findings reveal that the higher the interpersonal media related motivations, such as participating or sharing, the higher the level of involvement of video-sharing website usage behaviors is. However, the mass media related motivations, such as browsing or consuming, are irrelevant to the level of usage involvement. The earlier users adopt video-sharing websites, the higher level of usage involvement is. The more value video-sharing websites’ users put for video sites’ performance perception, the lower level of usage involvement is; on the contrary, the more value video-sharing websites’ users put for impression management, the higher level of usage involvement is. Taken as a whole, the higher level of usage involvement, the higher level of gratifications acquired from using user-generated video-sharing websites is. This paper establishes a comprehensive behavior model of video-sharing websites, which is helpful both for online media research and business practice. It is worthy of noting that the findings are based on survey data from a single country, and may impact this paper’s external validity.

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