A cross-national study on the excessive use of short-video applications among college students

Short-video applications such as YouTube and TikTok have received popular attentions these days. YouTube becomes the most popular social media platform in the US with 73% of American adults using it (Pew Research Center, 2018), TikTok gains its global momentum and has replaced Facebook as the world's most downloaded app (Yurieff, 2018). Compared with other social media platforms, they have claimed the market share at a very fast speed primarily through meeting a variety of user psychological needs, such as social interaction, psychological transformation and respect by precise positioning (Wu, 2017). In addition, the easy-to-use video editing features make each user a video creator, greatly increasing users' interests (Kuss & Griffiths, 2017).

Despite the many benefits offered by short-video apps, many individuals reported that their usage had become excessive causing disruptions to their daily lives (e.g., such as emotional depression, low learning or work efficiency, poor time management) – the symptoms similar to other forms of behavioral addictions (Gao et al., 2017; Olasina & Kheswa, 2021). The excessive use of short-form video apps is receiving much attention lately. A growing body of research has found that the easy-to-use and entertainment characteristics of short-video apps reinforce people's overuse tendency and make it difficult to contain their urge. Young people spend substantial time using these short-form video apps despite experiencing negative consequences. For instance, approximately 22% of TikTok users spend more than 1 h per day (Biznext, 2018).

Similar to SNS or Internet addiction, overuse of short-video apps may also cause addictive behavior. However, compared with SNS or Internet in general, short videos exert several key differences: (a) condensation of stories into limited amount of time, (b) more appeals to the younger generation with little or no requirement for technology know-how, and (c) engaging through short-bursts of thrills, rather than expansive, long durations of stories. These short forms of video engagement create the appeal that is different from other forms of behavioral addictions (e.g., video games, Internet addiction, etc.), which require longer durations and continuous engagement to drive the behavioral addiction. This causes a fundamental difference in the engagement process.

As a result, determinants of the excessive short-video use and their relationships may also differ from the SNS addictions. However, research on the excessive use of short-video apps has only received beginning attentions (Zhang et al., 2019). As such, it is important to gain an in-depth understanding of what may lead to the excessive use of short-video apps, and the intertwined relationships among the key constructs.

Previous research has identified factors that directly affect SNS addiction (Choi & Lim, 2016; Hasan et al., 2018), but failed to clarify the formation process of SNS addiction. In general, the main challenge is that it is difficult to distinguish true addictive behaviors from excessive use. Addiction typically occurs over a long period of time. Furthermore, most users show an excessive use during their daily use, characterized by an inability to regulate their behavior, and this habit could cause a more serious result in the long run. Existing research shows that the prerequisite to behavioral addiction is excessive problematic use (Chen et al., 2001; Ho et al., 2017). However, there is still insufficient attention to the psychological mechanism of excessive short-video use.

Several researchers have advocated that the degree of individual dependence on the medium depends on the usefulness of the medium in accomplishing the individual's specific motivational goals (Chen et al., 2001; Chen et al., 2004; Kim & Jung, 2017). Accordingly, attachment to social media for satisfying of individual's motivation may result in excessive use of the social media. However, personal motivation or needs that affect the dependence behavior in the context of short-video apps still have not received much attention. Therefore, this study draws upon media dependence theory combined with uses and gratifications theory to investigate this issue. Rather than exploring the potential antecedents of excessive use of short-video apps, this study also interested in examining the interaction between users and cognitive execution to better understand the formation process of demand satisfaction and excessive use behavior. We extend the established I-PACE model (Gentina & Rowe, 2020) to explain the antecedents and mechanisms of the excessive use of digital technologies with inhibitory control to examine how use scenarios contribute to problematic short video use.

Moreover, understanding the influences of social and cultural factors on behavior has great significance, many researchers ask for more studies within a social-culture perspective to shed new light just as the call for more investigation on the influence of culture (Ramawela & Chukwuere, 2020). For example, Straub (1994) once pointed out that Japan and the U.S. are a good comparison of culture for the context of information systems study, because uncertainty avoidance in Japan is significant factors in explaining perceptions about new technologies and departures from the U.S. experience, they are two markedly different cultures and these differences will affect their use of technology, and results suggested the importance of culture comparison between the different country samples. Thus, examining the excessive use to short-video apps from the social and culture aspects is necessary. Furthermore, many studies point out that adolescents, especially college students, are susceptible to Internet overuse (Davis, 2001). At first glance, it is easy to find that short-video apps are largely used by the trendy and savvy Generation Z customers. The choice of college students as our focus of the study is based on the fact that it is common for them to spend more time on short-video apps, and excessive use behavior most frequently occurs during college students. Therefore, this study investigates the excessive use issues by comparing the difference between Easter (China) and Western (U.S.) college students. Our sample also represents the largest short-video apps user group.

Our study offers several contributions to understanding the excessive use of short-video apps among college students. First, prior studies focus on adolescents (Zhang et al., 2019) and addictive behaviors in SNS, smartphone or Internet context (Adiele & Olatokun, 2014; Fong-Ching, Chiung-Hui, Chiu, Chen et al., 2019; Ho et al., 2017), rather than young adults' excessive use behavior in short-video apps, and this study offers an initial investigation of culture differences in excessive use short-video apps among college students. Second, from the perspective of demand, we extend the I-PACE model combined with individual's motivation, elucidating how the excessive use behavior is formed. Our paper contributes to explaining the motivation-excessive dependency relationship by providing an explanation underpinned by uses and gratifications theory.