Understanding envy and users’ responses to envy in the context of social networking sites: A literature review

Helena Wenninger, Christy M.K. Cheung and Michal Chmielinski

International Journal of Information Management, 2021, vol. 58, issue C

Abstract: Envy is an ancient theme of interest and various academic disciplines researched the topic in the last decades. With the advance of technologies and the popularity of social networking sites (SNSs), there is a need to comprehend what is new and unique about envy in the SNS environment. To contribute to an improved understanding of this phenomenon, we investigate academic research on envy in the context of SNSs. Particularly, in this work, we review and clarify the concept of envy in the SNS context and how users respond to envy they experienced in an SNS environment. This allows us to (1) better comprehend the conceptualization and theorization of envy in the SNS context, and to (2) identify particularities of users’ responses to envy. Based on our analysis, we observe that there exists a need to contextualize definition, operationalization and theorization further. Responses to SNS-induced envy mirror findings from the offline context with purchase intentions as an interesting and relevant behavioral response for the SNS context, since most revenues are generated by advertisement on these sites. We provide directions for future investigations on the phenomenon of SNS-induced envy.

Keywords: Social networking sites; Literature review; Upward social comparison; Social media; SNS-induced envy; Responses to envy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401220315024
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ininma:v:58:y:2021:i:c:s0268401220315024

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2020.102303

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Information Management is currently edited by Yogesh K. Dwivedi

More articles in International Journal of Information Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().