Waheed Hajra, Anjum Maria, Rehman Mariam, Khawaja Amina
Department of Computer Science, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore, Pakistan.
Department of Psychology, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore, Pakistan.
PLoS One. 2017 Feb 2;12(2):e0169693. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169693. eCollection 2017.
Social networking sites (SNS) are used for social and professional interaction with people. SNS popularity has encouraged researchers to analyze the relationship of activities performed on SNS with user behavior. In doing so, the term "user behavior" is rather used ambiguously with different interpretations, which makes it difficult to identify studies on user behavior in relation to SNS. This phenomenon has encouraged this thorough research on the characteristics of user behavior being discussed in the literature. Therefore, in this study, we aim to identify, analyze, and classify the characteristics associated with user behavior to answer the research questions designed to conduct this research. A mapping study (also called scoping study), which is a type of systematic literature review, is employed to identify potential studies from digital databases through a developed protocol. Thematic analysis is carried out for the classification of user behavior. We identified 116 primary studies for full analysis. This study found seven characteristics associated with behavior that have direct influence on SNS use and nine factors that have an indirect effect. All studies were conducted largely under seven areas that set the context of these studies. Findings show that the research on SNS is still in its early stage. The range of topics covered in the analyzed studies is quite expansive, although the depth in terms of number of studies under each topic is quite limited. This study reports that activities performed on SNS are either associated with user behavior or reflect personality characteristics. The findings of this study could be used by practitioners to evaluate their SNS platforms and develop more user-centered applications. These studies can also help organizations to understand better the needs of their employees.
社交网站（SNS）用于与人们进行社交和专业互动。SNS的普及促使研究人员分析在SNS上进行的活动与用户行为之间的关系。在这样做的过程中，“用户行为”一词的使用相当模糊，有不同的解释，这使得很难确定与SNS相关的用户行为研究。这种现象促使对文献中讨论的用户行为特征进行了这项深入研究。因此，在本研究中，我们旨在识别、分析和分类与用户行为相关的特征，以回答为开展本研究而设计的研究问题。采用一种映射研究（也称为范围界定研究），它是系统文献综述的一种类型，通过一个制定的方案从数字数据库中识别潜在的研究。对用户行为进行主题分析以进行分类。我们确定了116项主要研究进行全面分析。本研究发现了与行为相关的七个对SNS使用有直接影响的特征和九个有间接影响的因素。所有研究主要在七个领域进行，这些领域设定了这些研究的背景。研究结果表明，关于SNS的研究仍处于早期阶段。尽管每个主题下的研究数量深度相当有限，但分析研究涵盖的主题范围相当广泛。本研究报告称，在SNS上进行的活动要么与用户行为相关，要么反映个性特征。本研究的结果可供从业者用于评估他们的SNS平台并开发更以用户为中心的应用程序。这些研究还可以帮助组织更好地了解其员工的需求。
