How to Quit Facebook Without Experiencing Withdrawal
A study by Prof. Xianchi Dai reveals that people who quit Facebook for three days have a much weaker urge to return to it if they are reminded of other social media sites. Find out more in the media stories by The Huffington Post and The Atlantic.
When a product becomes temporarily unavailable, does the desire for it increase or decrease over time?
According to a new study co-authored by Xianchi Dai, Assistant Professor of Department of Marketing at The Chinese University of Hong Kong Business School, five studies were conducted where they tested how abstinence affected desire. One of the studies was to test people if quitting Facebook for three days would increase or decrease their desire for it.
To assess how people reacted to Facebook deprivation, researchers asked 167 undergraduate students at CUHK to abstain from the social media site for three days. Participants, split into two groups, answered that same set of survey questions except for one key element: One group was explicitly queried at the beginning and end of the experiment about using other social networks such as Instagram and WhatsApp, and the other was not.
After three days without Facebook, those who had not been asked about other social media sites said they wanted to use Facebook more than they did on the first day. But those who had been reminded of alternative social media sites and apps that could fulfill their desire for online friendship exhibited a much weaker urge to return to Facebook than at the beginning of the experiment.
Find out more about Prof. Dai’s research in the media stories by The Huffington Post (PDF) and The Atlantic (PDF).
Click here to read the full study “How Nonconsumption Shapes Desire” in Journal of Consumer Research by Prof. Dai and his co-author.
Source: The Huffington Post and The Atlantic
Date published: 17 October, 2014 / 19 November, 2014
Here is the abstract of Prof. Dai’s paper:
How Nonconsumption Shapes Desire (Xianchi Dai, Ayelet Fishbach)How does nonconsumption shape desire? The proposed model suggests that desire depends on the length of nonconsumption of a good and the presence of salient alternatives, and that desire is at least partially constructed. In the absence of salient alternatives, a longer nonconsumption period results in stronger desire for the unconsumed good. However, in the presence of salient alternatives, individuals infer that they have developed new tastes, and thus a longer nonconsumption period results in a weaker desire for the unconsumed good. Five studies support this model across nonconsumption of various goods: food from home when attending college (study 1); chametz food during the Passover holiday (study 2); social media (i.e., abstaining from Facebook; study 3); and cultural foods (i.e., forgoing Japanese food, study 4; and Thai food, study 5). We discuss implications of our findings for when and how the experience of desire is constructed and situationally determined.
Photo: Shutterstock / Annette Shaff