Li Xiaolin, Xiao Qianwei, Wang Xuesong, Xue Weichun, Deng Wanqiu
Business and Tourism School, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu 611830, China.
Business and Tourism School, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu 611830, China.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2025 Mar;253:104757. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2025.104757. Epub 2025 Jan 31.
Thanks to the development of digital technology, short-videos have become fully integrated into users' daily lives. Time, as an intangible yet important environmental variable, subtly influences individuals' cognition and behavior in various ways. Among the existing studies on short-video platforms, there has been limited focus on the impact of temporal landmarks on social media users' behavior and preferences. To address this gap, this paper examines how beginning or ending temporal landmarks in short-videos activate a sense of starting or finishing within a social media context. It explores the mechanisms of user preferences for personal branding under different temporal perceptions and further examines the boundary role of users' personal traits. The results show that the main effects of temporal landmarks on personal brand preferences, as well as the mediating role of attributional needs and uniqueness needs and the moderating role of self-construal, are significant. Specifically, for users with independent self-construal, those activated by beginning temporal landmarks show a higher preference for competence-based personal brands; for users with interdependent self-construal, those in scenarios with ending temporal landmarks exhibit a stronger preference for warmth-based personal brands. This paper enriches research on user behavior related to temporal landmarks in social media, expands the applicability of the stereotype content model in personal branding, and provides suggestions for short-video social media platforms to attract, convert, and monetize user traffic. It also offers marketing insights for businesses on arranging activities according to consumer traits and temporal factors.
得益于数字技术的发展，短视频已全面融入用户的日常生活。时间，作为一个无形却重要的环境变量，以各种方式潜移默化地影响着个体的认知和行为。在现有的关于短视频平台的研究中，对于时间节点对社交媒体用户行为和偏好的影响关注有限。为了填补这一空白，本文探讨了短视频中的起始或结束时间节点如何在社交媒体环境中激活一种开始或结束的感觉。它探究了在不同时间认知下用户对个人品牌偏好的机制，并进一步考察了用户个人特质的边界作用。结果表明，时间节点对个人品牌偏好的主效应，以及归因需求和独特性需求的中介作用和自我建构的调节作用都是显著的。具体而言，对于具有独立自我建构的用户，由起始时间节点激活的用户对基于能力的个人品牌表现出更高的偏好；对于具有相互依赖自我建构的用户，处于有结束时间节点场景中的用户对基于温暖的个人品牌表现出更强的偏好。本文丰富了关于社交媒体中与时间节点相关的用户行为的研究，扩展了刻板印象内容模型在个人品牌塑造中的适用性，并为短视频社交媒体平台吸引、转化和实现用户流量货币化提供了建议。它还为企业根据消费者特质和时间因素安排活动提供了营销见解。
