The impact of users’ sense of belonging on social media habit formation: Empirical evidence from social networking and microblogging websites in China

Continued usage is critical to the success of social media applications. Although usage tends to become routine, little is known about the development of these habits, particularly with regard to users’ sense of belonging. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of habit formation, we propose a conceptual model that introduces users’ sense of belonging to explore the formation of usage habit from an affective perspective. The empirical results (for two samples of 594 social network users and 608 microbloggers in China) suggest that sense of belonging positively influences the strength of usage habit. In addition, sense of belonging attenuates the effect of frequency of past behavior on usage habit. These findings offer rich insights for understanding how and why social media usage habit arises. The implications for both theory and practice are discussed.