The moderating effect of environmental gamification on the relationship between social media marketing and consumer-brand engagement: A case study of Ant Forest Gen Z users.

Social media marketing plays a relevant role in the brand promotion of enterprises owing to its advantages of rapid and diversified communication with consumers. The Chinese Internet enterprise Alipay launched Ant Forest as a mobile application with gamified social functions, bringing consumer-brand engagement. Ant Forest provides a variety of gamification functions (e.g. point, leaderboard, badge, task and teamwork) to encourage users to participate in environmental protection and public welfare activities. These gamification mechanisms, combined with the spread of social media, have realised the co-creation of user brand value. In the current study, 305 Gen Z users of Ant Forest were surveyed through an online questionnaire, and the data analysis was conducted using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) method. This study indicates that the four elements of entertainment, trendiness, customisation and word-of-mouth in social media marketing have statistically significant direct effects on the consumer-brand engagement in Ant Forest. In addition, gamification shows a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between customisation and consumer-brand engagement and a significant negative moderating effect on the relationship between trendiness and consumer-brand engagement in Ant Forest. This study adds gamification to the conceptual system of social media marketing and provides suggestions for the development of gamified social media marketing applications.

The effects of negative social media connotations on subjective wellbeing of an ageing population: A stressor-strain-outcome perspective.

In recent years, users' privacy concerns and reluctance to use have posed a challenge for the social media and wellbeing of its users. There is a paucity of research on elderly users' negative connotations of social media and the way these connotations contribute to developing passive behaviour towards social media use, which, in turn, affects subjective wellbeing. To address this research vacuum we employed the stressor-strain-outcome (SSO) approach to describe the evolution of passive social media use behaviour from the perspective of communication overload, complexity, and privacy. We conceptualized subjective wellbeing as a combination of three components-negative feelings, positive feelings, and life satisfaction. Negative and positive feelings were used to derive an overall affect balance score that fluctuates between 'unhappiest possible' and 'happiest possible'. The proposed research framework was empirically validated through 399 valid responses from elderly social media users. Our findings reveal that communication overload and complexity raise privacy concerns among social media users, which leads to passive usage of social media. This passive social media use improved the subjective wellbeing favourably by lowering negative feelings and raising positive feelings and life satisfaction. The findings also revealed that respondents' overall affect balance leans towards positive feelings as a consequence of passive social media use. This study contributes to the field of technostress by illuminating how the SSO perspective aid the comprehension of the way passive social media use influences the subjective wellbeing of its users.

Innovation Diffusion: The Influence of Social Media Affordances on Complexity Reduction for Decision Making.

Social media is a prominent communication platform. Its active usage permeates all generations and it is imperative that the platform be fully optimized for knowledge transfer and innovation diffusion. However, there are several considerations regarding platform usage, including media affordances. Social media affordances enable users to interact with the world around them through features of modality, agency, interactivity, and navigation. Previous studies have indicated that social media affordances significantly influence user behavior and usage. However, research exploring the effect of social media affordances on knowledge acquisition and the reduction of decision-making complexities is limited. Therefore, focusing on 179 paddy farmers in Malaysia, this study examined the effect of social media affordances on information quality, knowledge acquisition, and complexity reduction regarding innovation adoption decisions using a quantitative approach. This study's findings reveal that social media affordances have a significant effect on perceived information quality, knowledge acquisition, and complexity reduction.

Psychosocial impact of COVID-19 pandemic on Malaysian families: a cross-sectional study.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the psychosocial impact of COVID-19 on Malaysian families. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study performed using an anonymous online questionnaire distributed through social media, email and the Department of Social Welfare. SETTING: Malaysian families were invited to answer the questionnaires. The sampling was performed between 12 May 2020 and 9 June 2020. INTERVENTION: The psychological impact was assessed using the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) and Children's Revised Impact of Event Scale (CRIES). The mental health status was assessed using the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS) 21. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: (1) Psychological impact on Malaysian families. (2) Prevalence of mental health status of Malaysian families during COVID-19 pandemic. RESULT: A total of 409 Malaysian families have responded (409 parents and 348 children), 154 respondents (38%) reported high psychological impact (score 14) for psychological construct and 189 respondents (46%) reported high psychological impact (score 6) for behavioural construct. A significantly higher proportion of respondents with not permanent employment status of the family lead reported high psychological impact. The prevalence of anxiety reported from family respondents was 23%. Forty-five children answered the DASS-21 questionnaire; 28.5% reported anxiety, 31.4% reported depression and 13.3% reported stress. The job security status of the family lead was found to be the predictive factor for the mean total IES-R score (psychological construct) and ethnicity for mean total CRIES-8 and CRIES-13. CONCLUSION: Rates of depression and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic were high. Findings suggest that urgent measures to ensure job security among Malaysian families are important to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychosocial and mental health outcomes.