Revealing the Young People’s Cognitive Structure of Sharing Video Online: An Exploratory Research: An Abstract

Associated with the technology progress, mobile devices have gradually changed our lifestyle from outdoor activities to electronic leisure (e-leisure) activities (Santharam, 2014). Owing to the rapid development and popularization of world internet, more and more young people use mobile phones for online leisure behaviors, especially connecting to video-sharing websites. Although there are many platforms or communities supporting video sharing such as YouTube, Vine, Twitch, Instagram, and Facebook, the youth may encounter some barriers of using these video-sharing websites or applications (apps) via their smartphone. Such barriers may reduce the youth’s willingness or limit their participations in video-sharing activities. For marketers or designers of video-sharing websites/apps, it is important to know what kinds of barriers users encountered, in order to overcome barriers to attract more users participating the e-leisure activity and increase operating profits accordingly.

This study, based on leisure constraints theory and means-end theory, aims to understand young people’s cognitive structure of using video-sharing websites/apps, especially when they encounter e-leisure constraints. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed to collect data. Sixty one-on-one in-depth interviews were content analyzed to design the survey questionnaire. A total of 514 valid samples were collected for hierarchical value map (HVM) construction. By comparing the full HVM versus the e-leisure constraints HVM, the analytical results indicate that the importance of attributes, consequences, and values for the young people using video-sharing websites/apps is quite different. “Unable to resume the video after leaving the screen,” “creating playlist,” “providing movies,” and “location restrictions” are extremely important features that influence the willingness of such users with high e-leisure constraints to participate in e-leisure activities. By understanding the differences between these two HVMs, it is possible to provide marketers or designers with valuable insights for website/app design and marketing strategies.