DES

User behavior in digital environments

An area of our sustained research interest is what drives people’s engagement in digital environments and the different manifestations of this engagement, such as spending time, purchasing, and creating content, among others.

Within this stream of research, our research has covered a broad range of topics. We have, for example, explored why teens spend their time (Mäntymäki & Riemer 2014) and money in virtual worlds (Mäntymäki & Salo 2013; 2015) to how knowledge workers’ different uses of enterprise social networking (ESN) contribute to the perceived value of the ESN platform (Mäntymäki & Riemer 2016), and what makes people upgrade from the free subscription to the paid premium version in freemium services (Mäntymäki, Islam & Benbasat 2020).

We have also explored different facets of the so-called dark side of social media, such as voyeurism and exhibitionism (Mäntymäki & Islam 2016), regret (Islam, Mäntymäki & Kefi 2020) and Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) (Tandon et al. 2021) as well as people’s use of social networking sites (SNSs) as a means to cope with the stress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic (Islam, Mäntymäki, Turel & Dhir 2022; Islam, Mäntymäki, Laato & Turel 2022).

We try to understand how to reap the benefits and positive effects of digital technologies and how to understand, identify, and mitigate the potential risks.

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS

Islam, A. N., Mäntymäki, M., Laato, S., & Turel, O. (2022). Adverse consequences of emotional support seeking through social network sites in coping with stress from a global pandemicInternational Journal of Information Management62, 102431. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401221001249

Mäntymäki, M., Islam, A. N., Turel, O., & Dhir, A. (2022). Coping with pandemics using social network sites: A psychological detachment perspective to COVID-19 stressorsTechnological Forecasting and Social Change179, 121660. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162522001925

Tandon, A., Dhir, A., Almugren, I., AlNemer, G. N., & Mäntymäki, M. (2021). Fear of missing out (FoMO) among social media users: a systematic literature review, synthesis and framework for future researchInternet Research31(3), 782-821. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/intr-11-2019-0455/full/pdf?title=fear-of-missing-out-fomo-among-social-media-users-a-systematic-literature-review-synthesis-and-framework-for-future-research

Islam, A. N., Mäntymäki, M., & Kefi, H. (2020). Decomposing social networking site regret: a uses and gratifications approach. Information Technology & People33(1), 83-105. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/itp-04-2018-0184/full/pdf

Mäntymäki, M., Islam, A. N., & Benbasat, I. (2020). What drives subscribing to premium in freemium services? A consumer value‐based view of differences between upgrading to and staying with premiumInformation Systems Journal30(2), 295-333. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/isj.12262