A study of the influencing factors of mobile

social media fatigue behavior based on the

grounded theory
Yanfeng Zhang
School of Public Management, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan, China
Yali Liu
Xiangtan University School of Public Administration, Xiangtan, China
Wenzhuo Li
Department of Information Technology and Decision Sciences, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, UK
Lihui Peng
Xiangtan University School of Public Administration, Xiangtan, China, and
Cong Yuan
Foreign Language College, Nanchang Normal University, Nanchang, China

Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to discuss major influencing factors causing users’ mobile social media fatigue and divides them into three hierarchies,
including causal factors, intermediary factors and outcome factors. The study also sorts out connections between different levels of factors, thus
providing effective guidance for the sustained development of social media.
Design/methodology/approach – Based on the grounded theory and by collecting data through in-depth interviews, the authors use open coding,
axial coding and selective coding to analyze major influencing factors of users’ mobile social media fatigue, build a model using the software NVivo
11, organize and analyze mobile social media fatigue behavior and identify the relationships by combining the interpretive structural model and
explore connections among the factors.
Findings – The influencing factors of mobile social media fatigue behavior conform with the stressors-strains-outcomes (SSO) theoretical framework,
where stressors (S) include the five factors of fear of missing out, perceived overload, compulsive use, time cost and privacy concerns; strains (S) include
the five factors of a low sense of achievement, emotional anxiety, reduced interest, social concerns and emotional exhaustion; outcomes (O) include the
six factors of neglect behavior, diving behavior, avoidance behavior, tolerance behavior, withdrawal behavior and substitution behavior.
Research limitations/implications – It focuses on the discussion of the interactions between users’ stressors, strains and outcomes without fully
considering the impact of social environment and educational background on social media fatigue behavior. This study only focuses on one social media
platform in the Chinese context, namely, WeChat. We reply on the qualitative research method to construct the relationships between social media
fatigue factors because we were mainly interested in how users would respond psychologically and emotionally to social media fatigue behavior.
Practical implications – The study has extended the application of the SSO theory. Additionally, the research method and model used in this paper
may serve as guidelines to other interested scholars who intend to explore relevant variables and conduct further research on the influencing factors
of social media fatigue. In analyzing the causality of social media fatigue, the study has integrated the intermediary factor strain to display users’
strains from social media stress with a more detailed path discussion on the causality of social media fatigue, which has not received broad
attention in previous research literature on social networking services users’ use.
Social implications – In this study, text data are collected in a diversity of forms combined, allowing respondents to answer questions without being limited by
the questions in the questionnaire, which helped us to identify new variables of social media fatigue. As a result, we were able to dig out the fundamental causes
of social media fatigue and potential connections between the factors. Relevant scholars, users and businesses may analyze, manage and forecast users’ social
media fatigue behavior by analyzing the type of social media stress and users’ state, providing guidance for the proposal of corresponding management strategies.
Originality/value – Most relevant studies focus on the sustained use of social media, and there is a scarcity of studies on social media fatigue in
China. There is very limited research that conducts model analysis of social media fatigue through the integration of stressors, strains and outcomes.
Keywords Mobile social media fatigue, User behavior, Influencing factors, Grounded theory, WeChat, Social media fatigue, Mobile social media
Paper type Research paper

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on
Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/2398-6247.htm

Received 26 November 2019

Information Discovery and Delivery Revised 18 December 2019
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 2398-6247] 19 December 2019
[DOI 10.1108/IDD-11-2019-0084] Accepted 20 December 2019
 Mobile social media fatigue behavior
Yanfeng Zhang, Yali Liu, Wenzhuo Li, Lihui Peng and Cong Yuan
1. Introduction
The fast development of mobile information technology and
the rapid popularization of mobile social tools, such as
smartphones and tablets, have changed people’s information
communication and dissemination and substantially enriched
their digital life (Masur et al., 2014; Zha and He, 2015). The
widespread use of mobile social software has considerably
increased communication efficiency, thus enabling users to
receive and release information in better, faster and easier
manners. However, as people are enjoying the convenience
brought by mobile social software, they are also troubled by
redundant, useless and low-quality information brought by
mobile social software (Misra and Stokols, 2012). Problems
such as information overload and privacy concerns have
affected people’s life in a negative way (Bright et al., 2015; Yu
et al., 2019). As a result, some people are gradually decreasing
and even abandoning social media use, which is known as
“social media fatigue” (Bright et al., 2015; Cramer et al., 2016;
Swar et al., 2017; Luqman et al., 2017). Users with social media
fatigue may either temporarily or permanently avoid involving
in online social media interactions, producing significant
negative effects on themselves as well as businesses and service
operators (Oghuma et al., 2016). From the perspective of users,
social media fatigue results in their psychological and
physiological problems, which in turn lead into unhealthy
behavioral expressions (Choi and Lim, 2016; Sun et al., 2017).
From the perspective of businesses and service operators, social
media fatigue leads to lower service use or withdrawal of users,
posing huge challenges to the sustainable development of social
media. As mobile social media becomes increasingly popular in
the society, there is a growing need for researchers to study the
key factors affecting users’ mobile social media fatigue behavior
from the perspective of causality and to explore ways to
effectively interpret and analyze such behavior using scientific
theoretical models.
2. Literature review
Social media fatigue is a psychological concept, reflecting social
media users’ negative emotions and the extent to which
individuals avoid using or lack the motivation to use social
media as a result of their perception of increased social
comparison (Bright et al., 2015; Cramer et al., 2016); it is a
manifestation of users’ negative emotions in social network
activities, typically including tiredness, nonchalance and
indifference (Swar et al., 2017; Luqman et al., 2017). Dhir et al.
(2018) conclude that social media fatigue is a state in which
social media users suffer from mental exhaustion due to their
experience of information overload and service overload from
participating in interactions with different online social media
platforms. Prior research suggests that social media fatigue
possibly relates to social media users’ privacy concerns and
information overload, and that as a result, people consciously
spend more efforts on filtering and processing massive
information, thus ignoring the content of information (Xiao
and Mou, 2019; Dhir et al., 2018). Many researchers state that
the conflict between limited energy and information overload is
probably the key cause of social media fatigue (Hill and Moran,
2011; Bright et al., 2015). In recent years, social media fatigue
has drawn broad attention to Asian countries that have
Information Discovery and Delivery
witnessed rapid development of social networks such as Japan
(Lee et al., 2014), South Korea (Lin, 2015), India (Luqman
et al., 2017) and China (Zhang et al., 2016), making it a
popular topic in the area of social media. Studies find out that
users’ fear of missing out from frequent use and overuse of
social media will also result in social media fatigue (Yoa and
Cao, 2017), and perceived pressure and personal attributes will
produce direct or indirect impact on social media fatigue (Chen
and Lee, 2013). Some scholars start to pay attention to the
effects of social media fatigue on users’ psychology and
behavior, including reduced interactions, change of platforms
and discontinuance of use. They point out that users are greatly
affected both psychologically and physically while experiencing
social media fatigue, including emotional anxiety and declined
life satisfaction and productivity (Dhir et al., 2018). Based on
exploratory factor analysis, Bucher et al. (2013) proves that
improving users’ information literacy is an effective method to
avoid social media fatigue. In addition, social media fatigue is
affected by both internal and external factors. Relevant studies
reveal the impact of the internal factor of users’ personality
(Maier et al., 2015) and the external factor of social influence
(Zhou and Li, 2014; Ifinedo, 2016) on users’ discontinuance
behavior. Table I lists the main relevant research findings on
social media fatigue in recent years.
According to the above analysis and Table I, studies on social
media fatigue are still in the early stage of exploration. Different
decisive factors of social media fatigue have been investigated in
current research findings, such as concerns and interpersonal
comparison (Cramer et al., 2016), stress (Chen & Lee, 2013)
and personal attributes (Lee et al., 2014). Research methods
mostly rely on structural equations and regression analysis of
questionnaires. Most survey participants are college students,
representing a limitation of those studies. Currently, the
causality model for social media fatigue has not been studied at
a more in-depth level.
3. Research questions
Few studies have been done on the social media fatigue
phenomenon in China. This paper intends to explore the
factors, influencing Chinese users’ online social media fatigue.
We specifically explore the factors, affecting Chinese users’
mobile social media (using WeChat as an example) fatigue
from the perspective of causality and discuss two research
questions:
RQ1. What are the stressors, strains and outcomes causing
mobile social media fatigue?
RQ2. What is the association among the causal factors
causing mobile social media fatigue?
4. Research design
4.1 Theoretical basis
Sociologists Glaser and Strauss (1967) proposed the grounded
theory to explain and understand social phenomena and to
advocate the extraction of concepts from daily life experience
and social phenomena, to construct theories. It is an inductive
bottom-up research process and a qualitative research method
that extracts theories from empirical data. According to the
 Mobile social media fatigue behavior Information Discovery and Delivery
Yanfeng Zhang, Yali Liu, Wenzhuo Li, Lihui Peng and Cong Yuan

Table I Social-media-fatigue-related research

Region of
Study Context samples Method & analysis Studied variables
Rainie et al. (2013) SNS USA Telephone interview Reasons for Facebook breaks, frequency and time spent on Facebook
use
Lee et al. (2014) SNS Taiwan Questionnaire survey and Personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion,
structural equation modeling agreeableness, neuroticism) and social media fatigue and fatigue
behavior
Bright et al. (2015) SNS USA Questionnaire survey and Social media confidence, helpfulness, self-efficacy, privacy and social
confirmatory media fatigue
Cramer et al. (2016) SNS USA Questionnaire survey and Social comparison, motives for social comparison, Facebook fatigue,
regression analyses self-esteem and
positive affect
Shin and Shin (2016) MIM Korea Questionnaire survey and Mobile messenger overload, mobile messenger fatigue, relational self-
structural equation modeling concept, mobile
shunning behavior
Tromholt (2016) SNS Denmark Questionnaire survey, causal and Life satisfaction, emotions, intensity of Facebook use, Facebook envy
partial causal analyses and active and passive
Facebook use
Zhang et al. (2016) SNS China Questionnaire survey and System feature fatigue, information overload, social overload, social
regression analysis network fatigue,
dissatisfaction and discontinuous usage intention
Luqman et al. (2017) SNS China Questionnaire survey, structural Excessive social use, excessive hedonic use, excessive cognitive use,
equation modeling and regression SNS exhaustion,
analyses technostress and discontinuance intention
Lim et al. (2017) SNS Japan Questionnaire survey and Discontinuous usage intention, dissatisfaction, Facebook interaction,
Structural equation modeling social overload, and
threat to freedom usage
Dhir et al. (2018) SNS India Questionnaire survey and Compulsive use, fear of Missing out (FoMO), anxiety, depression,
structural equation modeling fatigue due to SNS use

theory, related associations are identified from original data
based on actual observations and through open coding, axial
coding and selective coding. In open coding, data are
abstracted to form concepts or categories; in axial coding,
various connections among concept categories are identified
and established to discover major categories, sub-categories
and their relationships; selective coding involves the process of
identifying the core category and the structure of network
relationships between categories from all identified concept
categories after a systemic analysis, and constructing research
findings within a reasonable theoretical framework. Through
the three processes, initial concepts and initial categories are
extracted from original data; connections between initial
categories are then identified to form major categories; finally,
relationships between major categories are analyzed to reach a
conclusion, thus arriving at a theory (Ellis, 1993; Soto, 1992).
Simulating the process of humans understanding the world,
this method is a process involving continuously raising
questions, making comparisons, establishing categorizations,
building connections and identifying theories (Pace, 2000;
Mansouriany and Ford, 2006). Figure 1 shows the bottom-up
research process of the inductive concept of the grounded
theory.
4.2 Data source and methodology
Factors affecting the social media fatigue are mainly obtained
through qualitative interviews. By using the most popular
Chinese mobile social media software WeChat as an example,
we collected relevant data on key factors influencing social
media fatigue by combining online questionnaire records, one-
to-one interviews, focus group discussions and online
community Q&A. Through continuous studies, comparison
and association analysis of the three major categories, including
SSO, we designed an interview outline based on the grounded
theory and adopted the mode of building an interpretive
structural model. To facilitate understanding, we designed the
interview questions mainly based on the two research questions
and collected data.
WeChat has been selected for the following reasons. First,
compared with other social media platforms, WeChat is one of
China’s most popular social media platforms on mobile
networks with a large user base. With deep penetration into
Chinese users’ daily life, WeChat witnesses a rapid increase of
daily active users. Second, because of its unique functions,
users may have varied social media fatigue experiences and
social media fatigue behaviors under different perceived
pressure. Therefore, it could be very interesting to study
WeChat social media fatigue behavior under perceived
pressure.
There is an active discussion on a question “Why are people sharing
less of their personal updates and ideas on social media over time?” on the
community platform Zhihu. Relevant comments were collected by
using a web crawler programed through Python to extract data from
a website at www,zhihu.com/question/42356789. After the data
 Mobile social media fatigue behavior Information Discovery and Delivery
Yanfeng Zhang, Yali Liu, Wenzhuo Li, Lihui Peng and Cong Yuan

Figure 1 Grounded theory process

Online Offline
interview interview

Start the Literature Propose a Issue Collect and

grounded theory research concept/Discuss questionnaires sort out data
questions

Third Secondary Primary Analyze

coding coding coding data

Argument by
example
Saturation Determine 1R
testing

<HV

Build the Supplement

Conclusion theory data

were collected, five experts in the field of user behavior research
were invited to further refine the interview plan according to the
analysis result and build principles by following the tag of “on-
demand design without infinite refining” until no more new themes
appear in the interviews. The specific interview information statistics
is shown in Table II.
4.3 Extraction of influencing factors
We organized and analyzed the interview contents according to
the grounded theory, continuously developed core concepts
and extracted influencing factors through the three stages of
open coding, axial coding and selective coding (Glaser and
Strauss, 1967). Text data were analyzed and processed through
NVivo 11, a professional qualitative research software. The
coding results were carefully checked by our research team.
4.3.1 Open coding
Open coding is a process of “breaking,” “triturating” and re-
combining data records and abstracted concepts, which intends
to gradually conceptualize and categorize data sets (Glaser and
Strauss, 1967). By organizing and analyzing the original data
on respondents, we integrated initial concepts according to the
frequency of answers to questions and the opinions from focus
group discussions, continuously proposed tags, extracted
concepts and formed categories, which finally led to the
extraction of 105 concepts. Next, we further identified the
following categories: fear of missing out, perceived overload,
compulsive use, time cost, privacy concerns, low sense of
achievement, emotional anxiety, reduced interest, social
concerns, emotional exhaustion, neglect behavior, diving
behavior, avoidance behavior, tolerance behavior, withdrawal
behavior and substitution behavior (Table III).
4.3.2 Axial coding
Axial coding requires repeated deliberation and comparison of
concepts and categories formed on the basis of open coding to
make a further summary, where relevant concepts are
connected and major categories are summarized according to
their connotations and relationships. Botschen et al. (1999)
mention that a factor referred to by more than one-third of the
respondents should be retained; otherwise, it should be deleted.
In accordance with that principle, we extracted factors from the
interviews of all respondents and acquired 16 independent
category factors. By exploring connections between those 16
categories and through further summarization and
combination, we obtained three major categories – stressor,
strain and outcome, as reflected in Table IV.

Table II Interview information statistics

Online questionnaire
Form records One-to-one interviews Focus group discussions Online community Q&A
Respondents 16 9 8 456
Respondent Doctoral students and doctoral Doctoral students Doctoral students and Community netizens
structure supervisors postgraduates
Survey process Questionnaires are sent to A 30-min interview is Interviewees are inspired to Relevant replies are extracted
respondents via email so they conducted with each expert, enter a brainstorm mode in a and invalid replied are filtered
have enough time to think which is noted down and natural and relaxing manner through a web crawler
about their answers recorded
 Mobile social media fatigue behavior Information Discovery and Delivery
Yanfeng Zhang, Yali Liu, Wenzhuo Li, Lihui Peng and Cong Yuan

Table III Categorization in the open coding of factors influencing social media fatigue behavior
Typical initial statement (partial) Concept Categorization
I’m sensitive to the prompt sign and prompt sound for Moments, Enthusiastic about frequently posting Fear of missing out
frequently refresh Moments and keep checking WeChat group updates, clicking likes and making
messages, Moments, likes, comments, etc. comments
I am adding more and more friends, most of whom are “zombie” Information overload, service overload and Perceived overload
friends; I follow official accounts quite frequently and receive posts of social overload
these accounts every day; I also have lots of group messages, but most
of them are useless and I won’t read them
I have to use WeChat sometimes to post and receive some necessary Having to use it Compulsive use
information and documents
Although I don’t chat with others, I simply cannot resist the temptation Lots of time is occupied Time cost
to open WeChat and refresh Moments and won’t find that time has been
wasted until I feel very bored
Lots of functions require personal identification information and Privacy is not guaranteed and is prone to Privacy concerns
geographical location to be activated and sometimes I don’t want all leakage
my personal information to be disclosed
I have liked others’ Moments before, so when I find that they basically The sense of loss is raised Low sense of achievement
don’t check my Moments, let alone clicking likes or making comments, I
have a sense of loss
I will blame myself and develop anxieties for not doing what I should Anxiety, disturbance and discomfort Emotional anxiety
have done when finishing the use of WeChat and finding that time has
slipped away before I know it
I used to be enthusiastic about posting on Moments with about three to Reduced enthusiasm and interest Reduced interest
four posts every day and keep replying to comments, but now I post
only once every one or two months. I feel little need to post anything
I am adding more and more friends on WeChat and many of them are Friends are grouped and “Only 3 days of Social concerns
little known or strangers to me. I have to think for a long time before Moments are visible”
posting on Moments and edit groups for privacy. I define groups who
can see my Moments, which is very troublesome
I feel very tired and fatigued after using it for long. I don’t even feel Developing tiredness and annoyance Emotional exhaustion
very relaxed and happy using it. I don’t want to check WeChat anymore
Due to the loads of information, I Mute Notifications for group Ignoring messages and notifications Neglect behavior
messages that I don’t need and I have stopped checking posts of official
accounts
Now for any updates on Moments, I won’t like or make comments; if I Reducing interactions and not participating Diving behavior
happen to read group messages, I will just leave them there without
replying; I have reduced my activity
For individuals and groups whom I’m not interested in, I simply block Avoiding and blocking information Avoidance behavior
their message and Moments; for official accounts and subscriptions that
I’m not interested in, I choose to Mute Notifications
An increasing number of friends start to do business through WeChat Enduring, tolerating and compulsive high Tolerance behavior
Moments. Although I dislike it, I don’t want to delete them or block frequent use
their posts because we are friends after all. I have to tolerate it
At first, I reduced negative emotions brought by WeChat by canceling Unfollowing, leaving groups and Withdrawal behavior
follows and quitting from groups. But now I have uninstalled WeChat uninstalling WeChat
and basically communicate via phone and text messages for all matters
No longer using WeChat now, I have plenty time to do things I like, such Substituting the use of WeChat with Substitution behavior
as reading physical books, meeting friends, and it feels goods reading, sports and other ways

Based on such a category context, the SSO model points out
that users bear the stress state (Strain) from stimulators
(Stress) and then produce corresponding physical outcome
(outcome) (Hsiao, 2017). Under the effect of stressors, users
may experience social media fatigue behavior manifested in
various forms. The SSO theory has fully proved the
effectiveness of its model outcome in the studies of
information technology application (Ayyagari et al., 2011).
Based on that, there are 16 categories in the three dimensions
of SSO of social media fatigue produced from an analysis
according to the grounded theory, and the frequencies of
different coding points mentioned by users vary from each
other. The hierarchy diagram in NVivo 11 shows the
distribution of the influencing factors of the three dimensions
in the coding points of social media fatigue behavior more
clearly and graphically. The more frequently an influencing
factor is mentioned, the bigger area it occupies, which is
displayed in Figure 2.
 Mobile social media fatigue behavior Information Discovery and Delivery
Yanfeng Zhang, Yali Liu, Wenzhuo Li, Lihui Peng and Cong Yuan

Table IV Relationships between major categories and sub-categories

Major category Independent category Connotation
Stressor Fear of missing out Development of emotions, such as discomfort, anxieties and worries about gains and losses due to fear of
missing out others’ experience and concerns, accompanied by constant clicking, frequent browsing and
continuous refreshing
Perceived overload Increasing notifications from subscriptions and official accounts and group messages and an increasing
number of “zombie” friends in the contact
Compulsive use Compulsive high-frequency use under the pressure of social relationships
Time cost Loss of time cost personally perceived
Privacy concerns Users’ perception of unguaranteed privacy and worry about information leakage
Strain Low sense of achievement A low sense of achievement and a strong sense of loss
Emotional anxiety Development of anxieties and disturbances after massive use of WeChat
Reduced interest Increasing fewer likes and comments with weakened enthusiasm for participation
Social concerns Feeling the need to tag WeChat friends and worrying about the appropriateness of posts on Moments
Emotional exhaustion Emotional shift from enthusiasm to disturbance and from active use to passive use
Outcome Neglect behavior Neglecting some messages and notifications with lower clicking rate
Diving behavior Browsing content without creating content and not involving in any discussion
Avoidance behavior Consciously ignoring or avoiding specific information and blocking individuals and groups not interested
in
Tolerance behavior Having to frequently use WeChat and creating a false image of active use under the pressure of social
relationships
Withdrawal behavior Unfollowing, leaving groups and uninstalling WeChat
Substitution behavior Substituting WeChat with other behaviors, such as reading, sports, etc.

Figure 2 Influencing factor hierarchy diagram

4.3.3 Selective coding 5. Interpretive structural modeling

Selective coding requires organizing the relationships between
core categories by further summarizing and refining
major categories with focus on core categories to reach a
maximum coverage and determine the relationships between
core categories and major categories. We conducted further
repeated research on the 16 major categories formed through
axial coding and concluded that there are significant
influencing relationships between the stressors, strains and
outcomes through selective coding, which is shown in Table V.
Sorting out the interpretive structural model relationship
between influencing factors is mainly based on the interpretive
structural modeling (ISM) proposed by Warfield (1973), which
is a systemic analysis method developed for analyzing structural
models of complicated systems. It is mainly applied in
systematic engineering analysis and is regarded as a computer
aided learning process (Warfield, 1974). In the research
process, thoughts and relationships in a system that are not
 Mobile social media fatigue behavior Information Discovery and Delivery
Yanfeng Zhang, Yali Liu, Wenzhuo Li, Lihui Peng and Cong Yuan

Table V Relationship structure of major categories

Relationship structure
Stressor fi strain
Strain fi outcome
Definition of relationship structure
Fear of missing out, perceived overload, compulsive
use, time cost and privacy concerns can all directly
affect users’ state of using social media, which
indirectly leads to social media fatigue behavior
A sense of low achievement, emotional anxiety,
reduced interest, social concerns and emotional
exhaustion will directly cause social media fatigue
behavior
Typical statement of respondents
I am getting increasing notifications from subscriptions and official
accounts and group messages and an increasing number of “zombie
friends” in my WeChat contact; lots of functions require personal
identification information and geographical location to be activated
and sometimes I don’t want all my personal information to be
disclosed
I will blame myself and develop anxieties for not doing what I should
have done when finishing the use of WeChat and finding that time has
slipped away before I know it; I feel tired after prolonged use of
WeChat and no longer want to check it

sorted out clearly are quantified into matrix forms and the
relationships between factors and hierarchies are figured out
through matrix operations and decomposition to build a
hierarchy model. The steps of the ISM are as follows: adjacency
matrix A ! reachability matrix M ! Establishing a hierarchy
structural model ! Establishing an interpretive structural
model of systematic issues (Warfield, 1974).
5.1 Establishing the adjacency matrix
According to the results from the grounded theory-based
interviews, we sorted out 16 influencing factors to collect
feedback from respondents. Considering both the feedback and
opinions from focus group discussions, the authors established
the logic relationship between causes and outcomes and
constructed adjacency matrix A of 16  16, which visually
displays the relationships between those factors, where aij = 1
means that factor si has direct influencing relationship to factor sj,
aij = 0 means that factor si has no direct influencing relationship
to Factor sj. The adjacency matrix formed is shown in Table VI.
5.2 Establishing the reachability matrix
While adjacency matrix A displays the direct relationships
between those factors, it fails to show the indirect relationships
between them. Therefore, reachability matrix M is needed to
reflect the direct and indirect relationships between the factors.
The authors used MATLAB calculations and the formula
(A 1 I) k-1 = (A 1 I)k = (A 1 I)k11 = M, where I stands for unit
matrix and K = 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Reachability matrix M may
express the direct and indirect influence between factors of a1–
a16 and the transitivity between them, which means that if ai is
able to reach aj and aj is able to reach ah ai will be able to reach
ah. The results are shown in Table VII.
5.3 Decomposing the hierarchical relationships between
the factors
With reachability matrix M as benchmark, we divided all
factors into different hierarchies, sorted out the relationships
between the 16 factors and built an interpretive structural
model. The influencing factors with a matrix factor of 1 on
Column i where influencing factor ai is located are defined as
R(ai), the reachability set of influencing factor ai: the
influencing factors with a matrix factor of 1 on column i
where influencing factor ai is located are defined as Q(ai), the
reachability set of influencing factor ai, which is shown in
Table VIII.
With R(ai) \ Q (ai) as the basis, the 16 factors are divided
into three hierarchies. According to the research findings, the

Table VI Adjacency matrix A

Indicator a1 a2 a3 a4 a5 a6 a7 a8 a9 a10 a11 a12 a13 a14 a15 a16
a1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a6 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a7 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a8 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a9 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a10 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a11 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a12 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
a13 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a14 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
a15 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a16 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
 Mobile social media fatigue behavior Information Discovery and Delivery
Yanfeng Zhang, Yali Liu, Wenzhuo Li, Lihui Peng and Cong Yuan

Table VII Reachability matrix M

Indicator a1 a2 a3 a4 a5 a6 a7 a8 a9 a10 a11 a12 a13 a14 a15 a16
a1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a3 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a4 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a5 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a6 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a7 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a8 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a9 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
a10 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
a11 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
a12 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
a13 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
a14 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0
a15 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
a16 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1

relationships between the factors conform with the research

Table VIII Reachability set and antecedent set of the reachability matrix model of the SSO theory and are fully consistent with the
i R(ai) Q(ai) R(ai) \ Q(ai) research objective of this paper. The SSO model points out that
users bear the stress state (strain) from stimulators (stressor)
a1 1 1, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 1
and then produce corresponding outcomes (outcome). Under
a2 2 2, 6, 11, 12, 14, 16 2
the effect of stressors (S), users may experience social media
a3 3 3, 9, 12, 14, 15, 16 3
fatigue (S), resulting in psychological fatigue and declined
a4 4 4, 8, 14, 16 4
satisfaction, which in turn leads to a series of social media
a5 5 5, 7, 12, 14, 15 5
fatigue behavior outcomes (O) (Dhir et al., 2018). Through the
a6 2, 6 6, 12 6
grounded theory-based analysis, fear of missing out, perceived
a7 5, 7 7, 12, 14 7
overload, compulsive use, time cost and privacy concerns are
a8 4, 8 8, 15, 16 8
defined as Hierarchy I, namely, the stressors (S); low sense of
a9 1, 3, 9 9, 13 9
achievement, emotional anxiety, reduced interest, social
a10 1, 10 10, 12, 14, 16 10
concerns and emotional exhaustion are defined as Hierarchy II,
a11 2, 11 11, 12, 14, 16 11
namely, the strains (S); neglect behavior, diving behavior,
a12 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12 12 12
avoidance behavior, tolerance behavior, withdrawal
a13 1, 9, 13 13 13
behavior and substitution behavior are defined as Hierarchy III,
a14 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 14 14 14
namely, the outcomes (O). In line with Table VIII, the
a15 1, 3, 5, 8, 15 15 15
structural relationships between the hierarchies are shown in
a16 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 16 16 16
Figure 3.

Figure 3 The SSO hierarchical structural model of the influencing factors of social media fatigue behavior

Neglect Diving Avoidance Tolerance Withdrawal Substitution

2XWFRPH behavior behavior behavior behavior behavior behavior

Low sense of Emotional Reduced Social Emotional

6WUDLQ achievement anxiety interest concerns exhaustion

Fear of Perceived Compulsive Privacy

6WUHVVRU missing out overload use
Time cost
concerns
 Mobile social media fatigue behavior
Yanfeng Zhang, Yali Liu, Wenzhuo Li, Lihui Peng and Cong Yuan
5.4 Theoretical saturation testing
After analyzing two-third of the interview contents randomly
selected, the authors and two doctoral students conducted
a theoretical saturation test on the other one-third.
Through the comparison and discussions, no more factors
influencing the theoretical model were extracted. Hence, we
inferred that the model of this study had reached theoretical
saturation.
6. Further analysis and discussion
According to the interview results and the hierarchical
structural model of the SSO theory, the stressors, the strains
and the outcomes consist of 16 influencing factors in total,
where the stressors (S) mainly produce effects directly on the
factors of the strains (S), which drives the strains (S) to generate
social media fatigue behavior outcomes (O). Different stressors
have different degrees of influence on the strains, leading to
different behavior outcomes in the end. Based on the
hierarchical structural model of the SSO theory, the authors
hereby make the following analysis:
6.1 Stressor analysis
Fear of missing out, perceived overload, compulsive use, time
cost and privacy concerns are the main stressors of social media
fatigue, which is consistent with predecessors’ research findings
(Bright et al., 2015; Cramer et al., 2016; Swar et al., 2017;
Luqman et al., 2017). Users are developing an increasingly
stronger sense of self-efficacy, resulting in their reduced interest
and enthusiasm for using social media and shift from an active
to an indifferent attitude toward the use. Most users regard
WeChat merely as an indispensable communication tool.
When failing to stay in real-time connection (behaviors such as
information acquisition, browsing, searching and social
interactions) with the realistic or virtual world using mobile
smart terminals, users tend to exhibit different degrees of fear of
missing out subconsciously or psychologically, such as
discomfort, disturbance, irritation and panic, and users with
fear of missing out show a higher degree of participation in
social media (Oberst et al., 2017). Compulsive user of and
excess participation in social media are also a few of the main
reasons for social media fatigue (Yoa and Cao, 2017).
Advertisements and false information severely disturb users’
normal social experience, causing bigger pressure of perceived
overload (Bright et al., 2015). As the management of social
media consumes much time and users perceive increasingly
higher cost in time management due to frequent use of social
media software, their self-accusation and sense of guilt is an
important factor leading to social media fatigue. In the big data
and cloud system environment, users’ behavior trace and
personal privacy are exposed to a potential data “theft”
environment through social media platforms (Xiao and Mou,
2019). Consequently, social media interactions and pleasure
are substantially diminishing and users’ confidence,
participation and willingness to share information are gradually
waning accordingly. The complexity of the people within social
media users’ social circle and of the social network chain has led
to a more prudent attitude toward sharing and posting social
information.
Information Discovery and Delivery
6.2 Strain analysis
As the intermediary hierarchy in the hierarchical structural
model of the SSO model of mobile social media fatigue, strains
have direct causality relationship with stressors, in which the
stressors indirectly affect social media users’ behaviors through
the strains. The strains originate from social media users’
perceived pressure (Dhir et al., 2019). This study has
summarized the following five strains:
1 low sense of achievement, emotional anxiety, reduced
interest, social concerns and emotional exhaustion, under
the influence of fear of missing out, perceived overload,
compulsive use and privacy concerns, neglect behavior,
diving behavior, avoidance behavior, tolerance behavior,
withdrawal behavior and substitution behavior toward
social media;
2 emotional anxiety, under the influence of fear of
missing out, triggers tolerance behavior toward social
media;
3 reduced interest, under the influence of fear of missing
out, perceived overload, compulsive use, time cost
and privacy concerns, triggered diving behavior,
withdrawal behavior and substitution behavior toward
social media;
4 social concerns, under the influence of fear of
missing out, compulsive use, time cost and privacy
concerns, triggered avoidance behavior toward social
behavior; and
5 emotional exhaustion, under the influence of fear of
missing out, perceived overload, compulsive use and time
cost, triggers avoidance behavior, withdrawal behavior
and substitution behavior toward social media. Social
media fatigue is the final outcome of users’ pressure from
overuse of social networks (Choi and Lim, 2016;
Lee et al., 2014).
The strains play an intermediary role between social media
stressors and outcomes, whereas various stressors lead to
different social media fatigue behaviors through different users’
strains.
6.3 Outcome analysis
Users develop social media fatigue behavior after experiencing
the strains caused by the stressors. Social media fatigue behavior
consists of neglect behavior, diving behavior, avoidance behavior,
tolerance behavior, withdrawal behavior and substitution
behavior. Neglect behavior means users’ increasing unread
messages and declining frequency of use directly caused by a
perceived low sense of achievement in their use. Diving behavior
means that users reduce their social participation to only
browsing and checking of relevant messages without making
responses or with reluctance in expressing their personal opinions
or views in public due to their higher degree of concerns for their
own values and privacy. Avoidance behavior means that users
gradually shift their active use of social media to passive use, such
as intentionally ignoring some information and avoiding specific
information, because of their social concerns developed from
their perceived tiredness and accumulation of negative emotions.
In terms of tolerance behavior, confronted by such negative
emotions as anxieties and tiredness brought by social media
pressure, users have a strong intention to alleviate social pressure
 Mobile social media fatigue behavior
Yanfeng Zhang, Yali Liu, Wenzhuo Li, Lihui Peng and Cong Yuan
and mental burden, but they have to use social media highly
frequently under work and social pressure, which is more of
“false prosperity” at a superficial level than a manifestation of a
real active attitude. In terms of withdrawal and substitution
behaviors, users generally have a strong sense of self-efficacy, and
thus, their demand for the platform value and application of
social media is the fundamental reason for their sustained use.
With gradually weakening enthusiasm and interest for using
social media, users’ activeness and proactivity to frequently post
updates start to decline. As a result, they may choose to turn off
functions that are not used regularly, hide posts, turn off
notifications, and even leave social networks. In addition, under
the impact of diverse new popular software, users may seek more
attractive alternative platforms.
Based on the behavior outcomes of a variety of mobile social
media fatigue users and in consideration of the mutual
relationships between the stressors ! the strains ! the
outcomes (the SSO model factors), we conclude that effective
measures to avoid users’ social media fatigue behavior include
increasing social functions and interaction characteristics of
systems, effectively filtering invalid information such as
advertisements, enhancing system security, reducing social
media users’ concerns and raising users’ activeness to use social
media.
7. Research significance
This study has the following theoretical significance. First,
by extracting factors on the basis of the grounded theory, the
study integrates the systemic analysis method in the
interpretive structural model, combines qualitative and
quantitative methods and analyzes the influencing factors of
social media fatigue from the three dimensions of “stressor,
strain and outcome,” which distinguish itself from previous
literature on social media fatigue research and provide a
solid theoretical foundation for the extraction of social
media fatigue causality. Second, the mobile social media
fatigue model in this study is consistent with the SSO
theoretical framework, making it perfect to interpret the
phenomenon with the SSO theory. Hence, the study has
extended the application of the SSO theory. Additionally,
the research method and model used in this paper may serve
as guidelines to other interested scholars who intend to
explore relevant variables and conduct further research on
the influencing factors of social media fatigue. Third, in
analyzing the causality of social media fatigue, the study has
integrated the intermediary factor strain to display users’
strains from social media stress with a more detailed path
discussion on the causality of social media fatigue, which has
not received broad attention in previous research literature
on social networking services users’ use.
The study has the following practical significance. First, as
researchers are often subjective in designing questions for
their questionnaire, respondents’ responses are consequently
affected by the format and content of the questions. As a
result, this often leads to variations in research findings. In
this study, however, text data are collected in a diversity of
forms combined, allowing respondents to answer questions
without being limited by the questions in the questionnaire,
which helped us to identify new variables of social media
Information Discovery and Delivery
fatigue. As a result, we were able to dig out the fundamental
causes of social media fatigue and potential connections
between the factors. Second, connections between different
stressors and strains will produce different behaviors. Thus,
relevant scholars, users and businesses may analyze, manage
and forecast users’ social media fatigue behavior by analyzing
the type of social media stress and users’ state. Third, based
on the differences in user behavior with respect to social
media fatigue, those behaviors are divided into neglect
behavior, diving behavior, avoidance behavior, tolerance
behavior, withdrawal behavior and substitution behavior,
providing guidance for the proposal of corresponding
management strategies.
8. Research limitations and future work
According to the characteristics of users’ complicated and
varied behaviors in using social media, this study revealed
the stressors, the strains and the outcomes of social media
fatigue and built a theoretical relationship model.
Meanwhile, the study has certain limitations. First, it
focuses on the discussion of the interactions between users’
stressors, strains and outcomes without fully considering the
impact of social environment and educational background
on social media fatigue behavior. In subsequent studies,
more comprehensive data and rational theories may be
further applied to explore the antecedent role of external
factors, such as environment and education on social media
fatigue. Second, this study only focuses on one social media
platform in the Chinese context, namely, WeChat. Hence,
we encourage the verification of the findings of this study
through other social media platforms (such as Twitter,
Instagram, Facebook and YouTube). Third, we reply on the
qualitative research method to construct the relationships
between social media fatigue factors because we were mainly
interested in how users would respond psychologically and
emotionally to social media fatigue behavior. In future
research, quantitative methods and empirical methods
should be used to conduct a deeper analysis and provide
informative theoretical and practical guidance for academic
researchers and practitioners.
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Corresponding author
Yanfeng Zhang can be contacted at: yfzhang@xtu.edu.cn