Exploring users' behavioural responses to social comparison on social media: the mediating roles of envy and fatigue

Social comparison on social media has become a pervasive phenomenon. Prior studies mainly examined the effects of social comparison on users' cognitive and affective responses. The present study aims to uncover the influencing mechanism of social comparison on social media on users' behavioural responses. Based on the stressor-strain-outcome (S-S-O) model, this study proposes a research model to investigate the effects of social media users' social comparison on their behavioural responses (i.e., discontinuance and information avoidance) through the mediating roles of negative emotions (i.e., envy and fatigue). The model is tested using 353 valid data from WeChat users in China. Results show that social comparison on social media is a significant driver of envy and fatigue, and the impact of social comparison on envy is greater than that on fatigue. In addition, envy and fatigue have strong effects on social media users' discontinuance and information avoidance. This study theoretically and empirically explains the negative consequences of social comparison, advancing our understanding of the dark side of social media use and expanding the relevant research.