Explaining Consumer Brand-Related Activities on Social Media: The Role of Self-Determination Theory

Consumers often engage in brand-related activities on social media, such as watching brand-related videos, joining brand communities, and writing brand blogs, thus affecting firms’ performances. In three distinct studies, we test an explanatory framework that builds on self- determination theory to identify motives for performing different brand-related activities. Results provide converging evidence that extrinsic motivations drive little engaging activities (e.g., watching brand-related videos), whereas intrinsic motivations primarily drive highly engaging activities (e.g., writing a brand blog). Socialization and personal identity play unique roles in leading people to either collaborate with other users to the content generation process (i.e., contributing) or generate online content by themselves (i.e., creating).