1. Introduction
Social media, as participatory artistic online platforms, have become popular spaces for amateur artists to exchange animation, comics and games (ACG) creative artefacts with others. Social media encourage users to share, communicate and cooperate with others, and enable users to actively connect with others. Their great capabilities have gained increasing popularity, fueled by the demands of ACG enthusiasts to collect and share creative content and distribute related knowledge. These platforms have become popular sites for amateur artists and fandoms, and have engaged individuals with original design and functions in user-created artwork delivery and distribution, ranging from art and comics sites (e.g., DeviantArt and Pixiv) to video sites (e.g., Niconico (previously Nico Nico Douga) and Bilibili (the B site) and also photo sites (e.g., Twitter and Instagram).
DeviantArt (dA), launched in 2000, is an online social platform for artists and art appreciators. According to dA’s current openings for staff recruitment page of the site has over 26 million members and 251 million submissions [
1]. DeviantArt demonstrates their members’ artefacts for every fan to see, comment on and consume; the number of visitors in one day immensely exceeds that of any renowned museum [
2]. Based on public voices, Salah [
3] argued that dA has replaced a role of the
Salon des Refuses, and has thus become an enormous global artefact market, presenting a new exhibition type for users’ evaluation and consumption.
In addition to dA, Pixiv (Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan), founded in 2007, is also a crucial social media site in the world for amateur artists and fandoms. Obtaining an official declaration from Pixiv on 28 January 2012, it is seen that the number of users had broken 4 million, monthly views totaled 2.8 billion, and the number of works published on Pixiv reached almost 24.5 million [
4], and up until 22 February 2014, the number of users by then had been more than 10 million [
5]. This shows how the influence of dA and Pixiv as ACG creative online artistic exchange platforms has manifested itself worldwide.
ACG amateur artists need to collect and distribute creative content and share information to help them cope in interactions with other users. With the current trend of cooperative interaction and co-creation, it is noted that the Internet plays a crucial role in facilitating dialog between amateur artists and their fans [
6]. The comic industry has even devised a way (e.g., involving their fans to partner with them in their product creation process) to actively interact with ACG social media sites [
6,
7].
Like any other profit-seeking industry, the ACG industry further developed with the evolution of media and the advancement of information technology (IT) [
8,
9]. For example, in the past, traditional editors of comic magazines gave their opinions on the main decision-making directions throughout the whole comic magazine publishing process, and were responsible for making major decisions with respect to content creation. At present, however, editors of a comic magazine welcome their readers to be a partner to help rate the manuscripts being published, and seek new, talented artists using conventions and contests. They also started to take part in social media sites, sometimes on Pixiv, actively searching for interactions with amateur artists and fans. They are totally different from traditional editors [
6,
7]. Comic social media users can express their views after paying attention to specific content, uploading illustrations, providing comments and sharing content uploaded by other users. These platforms not only provide media users with a sense of belonging to a community, but also enable them to control and maintain their content and manage content permissions [
10], which greatly increase the exchange activities of people with similar interests around the world.
Watabe and Abe [
7] mention the importance of the dōjinshi culture in the Japanese comic industry, and they argue that social media sites such as Pixiv create alternative opportunities for the practice of Japanese comic dōjinshi culture and the fandom of the English-speaking world, and that Pixiv users are organized in circles of similar interests and share their artefacts. They obtained the point of Jenkins, Ito & Boyd [
11], that the participatory culture of the Pixiv site was not created by the site itself, but by the people who use the site. They note that the collaborative culture was not developed by Pixiv or other similar social media, but is particularly originated in dōjinshi culture. Dōjinshi is a combination of the three stanzas, “dō” which means “the same”, “jin’, meaning “person”, and “shi”, meaning “magazine”. Therefore, the “Dōjinshi” can be accepted as a magazine which includes artbooks, light novels, ACG features and is published by an individual enthusiast that targets specific hobby fandoms and is passionate about something together [
7,
12]. Pixiv can be regarded as a part of the dōjin culture within Japanese comic history, which is the cause of users on Pixiv having common hobbies and sharing their knowledge and creations, similar to how simulated dōjin groups operated in circles [
7].
The rapid development and widespread introduction of new communication technologies is a challenge to individuals of new media, as well as to the study of Interactivity. While broader fandom studies are beginning to examine the concrete ways whereby online technologies can support “transcultural” communication [
13,
14], fannish community-building and practices of activities in reality, few studies have focused upon how fans of ACG use online technologies to interact.
Without such empirical research, it is difficult to judge how effective these ‘multidirectional communications technologies of the Internet’ [
13] actually are at helping ACG fans of various national, linguistic and cultural backgrounds establish connections, and what kind of interactions these technologies encourage and realize.
Smart users use social media to get their advantages, whenever they exchange user-created content (UCC) or user-generated content (UGC) with others. Even though the UCC of social media sites is so popular, what makes users participate in these UCC sites? The answer is still not clear. Kane, Alavi, Labianca and Borgatti [
15] pointed out that users in a social media environment seem to care more about the performances between their relationships, and interactions neglect the purpose of their communication. Thus we review the TAM and existing technology continuance use literature to identify the driving forces of technology usage.
By using TAM perspectives, Kim, Karatepe, Lee and Demiral [
16] found the perceived enjoyment construct has a positive impact on the attitude toward using social media among females. The perceived usefulness was a positive influence on the attitude toward using social media among males, and thus are more seemly to appear at festivals. Sullivan and Koh [
17] extend a dual-factor model of technology used to measure 268 Facebook users, and found that the prime enabler factor of social media continuance intention is the perceived enjoyment, while the prime inhibitor is the perceived complexity. These findings refer to the idea that there might have prerequisite factors that influence the users’ affection for perceived enjoyment or perceived complexity. Abdullah, Kamal, Azmi, Lahap, Bahari and Din [
18] try to formulate a research model by developing from the TAM to explore the perceived interactivity construct, and expect to impact the mediator of perceived usefulness for understanding the hotel online booking intention.
Interactivity, from a technical point of view, is the fundamental capability of interpersonal communication practices or reciprocal messages among senders, receivers and their interfaces, which suggests that web interactivity design can facilitate web-based communication [
19,
20]. Online social media is a popular emerging phenomenon. If the perceived interactivity of ACG social media and its influence on continuance use intention can be well understood, then we can apply it to web interactivity design or social media sites of different themes, in order to improve user interaction and interpersonal communication on the Internet. The adoption of new technologies or the popularity of predictability will help the related stakeholders facilitate a discussion of academic theories and an application of implementation practices, and more effectively improve the efficient use of resources.
We aimed to study the determinants of users’ behavior on social media, and whether perceived interactivity can improve social media interactivity design and extend the technology acceptance model (TAM) to the ACG social media environment. Based on this purpose, the following three questions were investigated:
- (1)
Is the perceived interactivity of users supported as a prerequisite variable in the TAM on ACG social media sites?
- (2)
After users’ perceived interactivity serves as the prerequisite variable in the TAM on ACG social media sites, are other variables still supported in the TAM?
- (3)
Is the willingness of users to exchange information supported as a dependent variable on ACG social media sites?
4. Results
The testing results (
Figure 2) of H1a and H1b demonstrated that users’ perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness were significantly affected by human-to-human interaction on ACG participatory social sites. The testing results of H2a and H2b showed that users’ perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness were also significantly affected by human-to-information interaction on ACG participatory social sites. The testing results of H1c and H2c also demonstrated that continuance use intention was significantly impacted by human-to-human interaction and human-to-information interaction. Therefore, regarding the first question of this study, the statistical verification showed that users’ perceived interactivity was supported as a prerequisite variable in the TAM on ACG social media sites.
Regarding the second question of this study, the statistical results of H3 and H4 showed that other variables were not supported in the TAM after users’ perceived interactivity served as the prerequisite variable in the TAM on ACG social media sites. This is because users’ continuance use intention was not affected by their perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, but impacted by perceived interactivity more on ACG participatory social media sites. Since we add the perceived interactivity as the external factor to extend TAM, the effect of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness seems comparatively not to be significant. This finding contrasts with the findings of some prior TAM literature, which is an interesting discovery of this study. We will discuss this in the next section.
According to the test results of H5, users’ continuance use intention positively impacted their willingness to exchange information on ACG participatory social websites. Therefore, regarding the third question of this study, users’ willingness to exchange information, which is a social media feature enabling users to create contents (mainly artwork exchange), was supported as a dependent variable on ACG social media sites.
The above statistical verification facilitates understanding of the factors that affect perceived interactivity on ACG social media sites and all TAM factors, as well as the important factors affecting users’ willingness to exchange information on ACG social media sites.
5. Discussion
This study helps to facilitate understanding of the determinants of users’ behavior on ACG social media sites. The statistical results of this study provide some implications for theories.
(1) The findings of this study supported H1a, H1b, H2a, H2b, H1c, H2c and H5. Perceived interactivity is involved as a prerequisite factor that affects people’s perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, which drives their continuance use intentions and then affects their willingness to exchange information. This was validated in this study. It can be seen that the interactivity design of a website is related to users’ intentions towards activities on the website, which affects users’ perceptions of interaction with the website and their intentions to continue using it.
(2) In the ACG social media context of the current study, perceived interactivity resulted in user reactions towards the website and beliefs about it, such as usefulness and perceived ease of use, and was related to an IT system leading to a continued behavioral intention and willingness to exchange information. In this study, the cognitive factors include perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. When people have highly perceived interactivity on using ACG social media sites, they would perceive the site easier and useful to use because they already have a high capability and ambition to use them. The effect of a specific IT system on perceived ease of use is also supported by the literatures. As Cyr et al. [
51] insist that perceived interactivity is a strong predictor of an individual’s behavior. The seemingly ambiguous effects of perceived interactivity on social media sites were clearly validated in this study.
(3) According to the statistical results of this study, H3 and H4 were not supported. The effects of users’ perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness on their continuance use intentions towards ACG social media sites were not significantly supported. Lee, Kozar and Larsen [
75] conducted a meta-analysis of 101 studies related to TAM published from 1989 to 2003. They discovered that 74 studies indicated a significant correlation among perceived usefulness, behavioral intention and actual behavior, while 58 studies indicated a significant correlation among perceived ease of use, behavioral intention and actual behavior. In other words, studies remain that do not support the correlation of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use with other variables.
These findings may allow the viewpoint of Bhattacherjee and Barfar [
32] to be reconfirmed. They argued that IT acceptance and continuance use intention are conceptually different behaviors, in that the former refers to users’ first-time adoption of a new IT, while the latter refers to their long-term usage of an IT that is already in use. Given their fundamentally different nature, it can be reasonably speculated that the factors that predict continuance use intention may also be significantly different from those that predict IT acceptance. In addition, in the light of the evolving nature of IT and the multiple benefits it can offer to individuals (in addition to productivity benefits), we maybe can follow Bhattacherjee and Barfar [
32] to employ expected benefits as predictors of continuance use intention, rather than perceived usefulness (which connotes productivity benefits only).
(4) Since Gu et al. [
76] compared the employees and students use of Instant Messaging (IM). They found that employees consider utilitarian is priority factor while students are more influenced by perceived hedonic in their intention to use IM. So maybe the users’ determinants of continuance use intention behavior have differences between different demographic groups. Glass and Li [
77] found that social influence was more important in determining IM adoption than perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use. More than attitude or reasonable cognition, factors such as emotional or cultural reasons may be related, which needs to be further investigated. We can maybe follow Jenkins’s viewpoint. Just as Watabe and Abe [
7] think it is important, it needs to be noted that Pixiv itself does not determine its culture. People, not media, are the fundamental factors responsible for creating participatory culture [
11]. Therefore, regarding website success, there seem to be other factors to further explore.
(5) As Watabe and Abe [
7] highlighted, the tagging function allows members to freely create their own; they not only provide information to users in a contingent fashion, but also visually indicate the process of contingency based on their particular previous action on the interface. In the Human and Computer Interaction (HCI) domain, users use these tags to expand their participation in online social media. Scholars indicated the crucial component of displaying the “interaction history” of users with the IT system. Pelaprat and Shapiro [
78] suggested to employ a “history of use” metaphor, for digital objects are not just an “ephemeral conversation”. Instead, the history data display should be rich that could reflect and influence users’ experience in many ways [
20].
6. Conclusions
Innovative applications of interactivity on social media are crucial to attract and retain online users. Though there is the potential for interactivity provided by the social media site, little attention has been paid to how interactivity might be more utilized. The findings suggest that perceived interactivity has a positive impact on user-perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, and has positive effects on user behavior which ultimately result in continuance use intention and willingness to exchange information. Hence, if online social media site designers and marketers wish to attract and stick users, then enhancement of web interactive features that enable users’ perceived interactivity is desirable.
6.1. Implementation Suggestions
Since the rapid development of e-commerce online, organizations have rushed to launch their own branded websites. However, the number of visitors has gone from bad to worse. Because the one-way communication method of corporate websites is no longer attractive, it is replaced by social media websites, which can be freely published, discussed and freely interacted with visitors themselves. From a practical perspective, this study also has several implications suggestions for the management of social media sites.
(1) The results show that human-to-human interaction is an important factor that may increase users’ perceived interactivity and willingness to exchange information on social media sites. Thus, to enhance the perception of human-to-human interaction, managers or designers of social media sites should provide some strategies to strengthen interaction among users. Management could encourage users to present their personal knowledge, such as achievements, exposure, discussion of works and topics and curation activities, etc. This would be to promote mutual attention and encourage comments sharing among users to increase interpersonal interaction. In addition, managers can enhance the compatibility of current popular technology teaching services and product promotion through various complementary services to increase human-to-human interactions as well.
Compared to social media platforms, a self-branding corporate site tends more to like one-way broadcasting, waiting for passive access, and may become less prominent. If the corporate sites can downsize to profiles, they may cooperate together to formulate a topic social media platform. Increasing more user-initiated activities and having users create/generate content to lead human and human interaction may greatly attract the users’ attention.
(2) Human-to-information interaction is a predictor of information exchange. Although many artists and painters are involved in ACG information exchange sites, the tags interaction can improve interpersonal relationships and the tag settings of self-editing make the flexibility with emotions and are fun and popular for users. Huang et al. [
79] find that emoticons, by means of text, may provide additional social cues beyond the electronic information to enhance the exchange of social information. Thus, management of social media sites could improve the richness of emoticons to strengthen visual cues and enhance user perceptions of virtual presence when browsing information on social media sites [
42]. In addition, if the Pixiv users can submit their works to Twitter, why can it not synchronize to other theme-related social media sites as possible?
Another suggestion is the different themes of social media sites can be developed, and it can increase the discussion of topics and tag individual visitors to attract users to come together. Because the relationship between the retailer and consumer can be transformed into user and user is not often opposite, somehow these can become close partnerships through the complementarity of information exchanges.
(3) Additionally, Lin and Chang [
42] argue that to enhance social interaction on social media, managers of social media may also embed some synchronous communication tools in information shared by users, which could allow users to conduct two-way conversations with an information contributor immediately. Recently, Pixiv has also incorporated channels for interaction among artists and sponsors, as well as for putting artwork in sales and on shelves. Although these belong to human-to-human design, prior categorization of information themes is still a good way to facilitate human-to-information interaction.
Therefore, we recommend that companies which envision converting social values of social media to commercial values should consider the impact of the orientations and characteristics of social media, and make a fit between marketing strategies and medium features. For example, Pixiv is more relationship-oriented than dA, possibly due to the influence of Japanese dōjinshi culture, so there are more derivative works on Pixiv. Users may care relatively more about communication cues which primarily convey interpersonal attitudes. Therefore, if managers apply this feature to different themes of user-generated websites, they can add interpersonal factors such as courtesy interaction to commercial interactions and strike a balance between marketing tasks and interpersonal, emotional and cognitive concerns.
6.2. Research Limitations and Future Study
There are fewer limitations in this research. First, the questionnaire participants are limited to those students whose expanded samples were experienced on the ACG social media site. However, those individuals who have not experienced on the ACG social media site may become potential users. Therefore, further study may broaden the scope to recruit current and potential users to compare how this model applies to different populations. Second, the study respondents replied to the questionnaires after their using an ACG social media site based on the impression of their memories. It may not be precise according to their actual reaction on using an ACG social media site. Future studies could control the context variables in a laboratory and exam independent and dependent variables to make a better assessment. Finally, given the broad perspective of this study, there were possible variables not included in the research model to be verified. Future studies may explore the ACG social media usage behavior and attitude, such as hedonic or perceived in a community factor, from different approaches.
This ACG topic research is related to the issues of globalization and cultural diversity. There is hope that the exploration of the Extension of the TAM model by Perceived Interactivity to Understand Usage Behaviors on ACG Social Media Sites can help the ACG culture/industry, and that it has the scientific and integrated approaches to sustainable development in the future.