Internet has become a popular medium for users to develop interpersonal relationships in recent years. People communicate online and develop online relationship for different reasons. In addition, previous research had illustrated the relationship with online communication behavior, personality, and negative emotions, like loneliness and social anxiety. Self-disclosure is also an important factor to relationship formation. Therefore, this study discusses how personality, loneliness and social anxiety affect motivation to create online relationships and the level of self-disclosure among users with different online relationship motivations. Internet users were divided using online relationship motivations into four segments in this study: highly motivated, motivated to find love, motivated by adventure, and low motivation. These segments were profiled using differences in personality, loneliness, social anxiety, and self-disclosure. Study findings elucidate the diversity of individuals who choose the Internet to expend their interpersonal relationships.
In order to understanding the various motivations of Internet users who had develop relationship online with others, first, the online relationships motives are explored by collecting data from experiential Internet users and experts, after exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the statements of motivations will generated and used in measuring online relationship motives. According to literature review, this present study proposes three online relationship motivations including: adventure, escape to a virtual world, and romance.
Second, specifying the Internet users from their online relationships motivation, discriminating them appropriately, concentrating on the different items of demographic profiles and examining the relation with personality, loneliness, social anxiety, and degree of self-disclosure.
Finally, this study will summarize the various motivations of online relationships and describes the characteristics and differences of the cluster of Internet users which segment by different motivation. These results will provide a clarify understanding on individuals forming relationships on the Internet. People with different personalities, tendency of loneliness and social anxiety will have different online relationship motivations and self-disclosure. Furthermore, the level of self-disclosure will varied with different online relationship motivations.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS II
國立臺北大學九十六學年度第二學期學位論文提要 III
ABSTRACT IV
TABLE OF CONTENTS VI
LIST OF FIGURES VIII
LIST OF TABLES IX
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Research Background 1
1.2 Research Questions 2
1.3 Research Procedure 3
CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 5
2.1 Online Relationship Motivations 5
2.1.1 Adventure 5
2.1.2 Escape to a Virtual World 7
2.1.3 Romance 8
2.2 Personality Traits 10
2.3 Loneliness 10
2.4 Social Anxiety 10
2.5 Self-disclosure 11
CHAPTER 3 EMPIRICAL STUDIES 13
3.1 Online Relationship Motivation Scale Development 13
3.1.1 Generation of Sample Items – Interview and panel discussion 13
3.1.2 Purification – Empirical study 1 13
3.1.3 Parsimony – Empirical study 2 18
3.1.4 Scale Validation – Empirical study 3 20
3.2 Online Relationship Motivation-defined Segmentation 22
3.2.1 Questionnaire Development 23
3.2.2 Sample and Data Collection – Empirical study 4 26
3.2.3 Cluster Analysis: Online Relationship Motivation-defined Segments 30
3.2.4 Personality, Social Anxiety, Loneliness, and Self-disclosure Differences among Motivation Segments 34
3.2.5 Segment Descriptions 37
CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION 40
4.1 Conclusion 40
4.2 Theoretical Implication 43
4.3 Practical Implication 43
4.4 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Studies 44
REFERENCE 45
Appendix I: Questionnaire with 56 Items of Online Relationship Motivations 50
Appendix II: Questionnaire with 29 Items of Online Relationship Motivations 53
Appendix III: Questionnaire with 27 Items of Online Relationship Motivations 55
Appendix IV: Questionnaire for Online Relationship Motivation-defined Segmentation Survey 57
Appendix V Descriptive Statistics of Four Empirical Studies 62
COPYRIGHT NOTICE 70
CURRICULUM VITAE 71
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