Willingness to Keep or to Give Up the Social Media for a Certain Monetary Compensation

Abstract

Millions of people around the world use social media every day for various reasons, whether it is sharing information, self-presentation, filling free time, or communicating with friends. The use of social networks brings with it advantages, but also risks associated with information overload, loss of privacy, as well as fraud or criminal acts. Mostly young people are connected to social networks almost constantly and find it more difficult to give up using social networks compared to older age groups. The aim of the present paper is to find out the willingness of social network users to give up social network such as Facebook and Instagram for certain monetary compensation. The necessary data were collected based on a questionnaire survey within 4 months. A total of 2 095 responses were collected. The static methods Chi-Square test of independence, logistic regression and the statistical program SAS Enterprise Guide were used to evaluate the results of the questionnaire survey. Analysis of Maximum Likelihood Estimates was tested for five predictors: Age, Gender, Income, Activity on the social network, Number of subscribers on the social network, especially for the social network Facebook and Instagram. Based on the results of the questionnaire survey, it can be concluded that Facebook users (in all age groups and regardless of gender) demand a higher average monthly financial compensation for giving up the social network compared to Instagram users. The same conclusion follows when categorizing respondents into age categories. Regarding gender, women demand lower monetary compensation than men in relation to both social networks. There was a significant difference in the Activity predictor, where active users asked for a higher amount of money for the Instagram social network and, conversely, inactive users asked for a higher average monthly payment for the Facebook social network.

Received: 25 July 2023 / Accepted: 20 November 2023 / Published: 5 January 2024