Predicting individuals' digital autopreneurship: Does educational intervention matter?
Introduction
Social media is “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p. 61). Compared with traditional media, such as television and newspapers, social media has greater reach, interactivity, usability, and ubiquity (Baccarella, Wagner, Kietzmann, & McCarthy, 2018). Online users, both individuals and organizations, can not only consume and share existing information, but also generate and publish self-produced textual and video content. Social media, being a powerful tool, has become an integral part of everyday life. A recent survey by Global Web Index (2018) revealed that 98% of online users spent 2.25 h on social media, which was one-third of their daily online hours. Respondents aged 16–24 reported the heaviest daily use of social media.
The ability to self-generate and self-publish content is the most unique feature of social media. Ordinary users can create and share intriguing and attractive texts, photos, selfies, and videos that might attract followers. Once users, such as bloggers, Instagrammers, or YouTubers, gain substantial numbers of followers on their respective platform, they acquire the status of “digital celebrities”. According to Liu, Qu, and Zhao (2017), digital celebrities are highly accessible; they frequently and directly communicate with their followers. This high interactivity with celebrities creates strong familiarity and affinity among their followers. Digital celebrities have significant social influence over their followers (Jin & Phua, 2014). This power enables them to play the role of opinion leaders, who are able to shape their followers' attitudes and behaviors (Djafarova & Rushworth, 2017).
One follower behavior that digital celebrities can influence is consumption. Digital celebrities and their followers form parasocial relationships (Hwang & Zhang, 2018). In this relationship, followers are likely to view their favorite celebrities as credible and trustworthy sources of information. For example, Lee and Watkins (2016) found that the vlogger–follower parasocial relationship positively influences followers' perceived brand value and inspires followers to own luxury brand products. Many firms have recognized the power of such parasocial relationships; they have reallocated their marketing budgets to cooperate with celebrities and leverage celebrity influence.
Digital celebrities can benefit from their follower base emotionally, socially, and financially. All celebrities' financial rewards are derived from their status as public figures. Ashman, Patterson, and Brown (2018) reported that digital celebrities earn profits from revenue sharing policies of social media platforms and followers' payments. For example, YouTube launched the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) and YouTube Red to encourage its users to upload high quality, eye-catching videos. Digital celebrities also cooperate with brands (e.g., endorsement) and/or develop their own businesses (e.g., selling own-branded products). Successful digital celebrities are adept at recognizing opportunities as well as identifying and acquiring resources; in other words, they are entrepreneurs (Morris, Webb, Fu, & Singhal, 2013). Ashman et al. (2018) labeled the phenomenon of digital celebrity entrepreneurship as autopreneurship, a portmanteau of “autobiography” and “entrepreneurship.”
Prior researchers have found that entrepreneurship facilitates socio-economic development by providing employment opportunities, social mobility, and economic growth (Reynolds, 2007). These researchers, in turn, have devoted themselves to understanding the antecedents of entrepreneurship by formulating various theories. For example, Castaño, Méndez, and Galindo (2015) identified social factors (i.e., economic freedom and rule of law), economic factors (i.e., GDP, R&D expenditure, openness, investment and public spending, and gross fixed capital formation), and cultural factors (i.e., corruption and schooling) as antecedents of entrepreneurial intention. Zapkau, Schwens, Steinmetz, and Kabst (2015) explored entrepreneurial intentions using the theory of planned behavior; their results show that attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control positively predict entrepreneurial intention. Obschonka, Hahn, and Bajwa (2018) proved that entrepreneurial alertness—rather than career adaptability—significantly explains entrepreneurial intention. Moreover, Espíritu-Olmos and Sastre-Castillo (2015) suggested that entrepreneurial intention develops based on four types of determinants: personal value (e.g., self-enhancement), socio-demographic characteristics (e.g., age and previous experience), education (e.g., specific education in entrepreneurship), and personality traits (e.g., need for achievement). Of these antecedents/theories, personality trait theory has received much more academic interest with respect to the entrepreneurship context (Zhao, Seibert, & Lumpkin, 2010). Because individuals have a robust propensity to think and/or behave, researchers typically argue that personality could be a crucial factor of predictability in entrepreneurship. However, some empirical studies suggested that personality may be significantly, but only weakly, related to entrepreneurship (Krueger, Reilly, & Carsrud, 2000), which indicates that moderation and mediation effects may exist in the personality–entrepreneurship relationship. Brandstätter (2011) advocated that the consideration of mediators could improve the theoretical reasoning, but that personality theory categorizes personalities descriptively and lacks an underlying mechanism. Additionally, prior studies have found that entrepreneurial education plays a critical role in the promotion of students' intention to start a business, but a contradiction may emerge in the personality-based entrepreneurial studies. Individuals with stable personalities may not change their entrepreneurial intention after taking an entrepreneurial course; this reflects the teachability dilemma of personality (Haase & Lautenschläger, 2011).
To tap into the relationship between personality and entrepreneurship intention and propose a solution for the teachability dilemma of personality, Wang, Lin, Yeh, Li, and Li (2016) integrated personality trait theory (i.e., the Big Five model), motivation theory, and entrepreneurial education into a single model. They specified that motivation will mediate the relationship between personality and entrepreneurial intention, suggesting that education will magnify the motivation–intention linkage. Their empirical findings show that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are successful mediators, and education can positively moderate the relationship between extrinsic motivation and cyber entrepreneurial intention. As such, Wang et al.'s model enriches theoretical insight within the entrepreneurship context.
Wang et al.'s (2016) study focused on start-up entrepreneurship; the current study aims to validate their cyber entrepreneurial intention model in the context of autopreneurship to investigate the drivers of autopreneurial intentions. Of the various social media platforms, YouTube is currently dominant, and hence the authors selected it as the field of research. According to a survey on social media use by Smith and Anderson (2018), 78% of U.S. adults used YouTube and 68% used Facebook. Use of other social media platforms was <40%; these platforms included Instagram (35%), Pinterest (29%), Snapchat (27%), LinkedIn (25%), Twitter (24%), and WhatsApp (22%). YouTube was also the most popular social media platform for every age group; the share of 18–24-year old respondents who reported using it was 94%. Many digital celebrities (e.g., Felix Kjellberg and Jenna Marbles) originated on the YouTube platform, and then developed their own businesses. Therefore, YouTube is an ideal choice to investigate digital autopreneurship.
Section snippets
Digital autopreneurship
Digital autopreneurship refers to entrepreneurship built from online user-generated content (i.e., autobiography). It is a type of unconventional entrepreneurship (Ashman et al., 2018). Morris et al. (2013) claimed that conventional entrepreneurship involves a series of activities, such as opportunity recognition, business concept formulation, resource identification and acquirement, and venture launch. In the conventional view of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs are experienced professionally
The relationships between personality and motivation
Extraversion is characterized as being assertive, active, optimistic, and in search of excitement and stimulation (Costa & McCrae, 1992; Zhao et al., 2010). John et al. (2008) suggested that extraversion is the quality of being active, assertive, having positive emotionality, and being sociable. Individuals with high levels of extraversion are energetic toward the material and social worlds and embrace challenges. Additionally, they are warm and affectionate, friendly, and enjoy others' company
Measures
The authors developed a questionnaire based on previous studies of personality, motivation, and entrepreneurship. The questionnaire had four sections. The first section collected respondents' demographic information, including gender, age, education, occupation, income, and whether or not they had finished a course in image processing. The other three sections contained items that captured respondents' five personality traits, intrinsic/extrinsic motivation, and digital autopreneurial
Results
Dijkstra and Henseler (2015) indicated that high multicollinearity among independent latent constructs may inflate the estimated path coefficients, and thereby increase the possibility of Type І errors (i.e., false positives). To determine if multicollinearity was an issue, variance inflation factor (VIF) tests for the three dependent latent constructs (i.e., intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and digital autopreneurial intention) were conducted. If an independent latent construct has
Discussion
Social media is a ubiquitous part of daily life for many people. It allows users to search for information, present themselves to others, and gain followers. The Internet allows ordinary users to generate and publish content at relatively low cost. If their published content attracts a large audience, ordinary users can establish large follower bases and become Internet celebrities.
Today, Internet celebrities have successfully transformed their content generation and sharing activities into
Theoretical implications
This study has several interesting theoretical implications. First, following Wang et al.'s (2016) idea, the authors incorporated personality, motivation, curriculum differences (i.e., entrepreneurial education), and entrepreneurship intention into a single model. The inclusion of motivation was a response to the inconsistent results of the personality–intention relationship in the context of entrepreneurship (Zhao & Seibert, 2006). Compared with recent studies that have considered personality
Acknowledgements
This research was financially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan under project number MOST 105-2511-S-018-013-MY3.
Ching-Hsuan Yeh is an Associate Professor in the School of Guomai Information and the School of Internet Economics and Business at Fujian University of Technology, China. He was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Information Management at National Changhua University of Education, Taiwan. He received his Ph.D. in International Business from National Chi Nan University, Taiwan. His current research interests include consumer behavior, e-commerce, and Internet marketing. He has published
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Ching-Hsuan Yeh is an Associate Professor in the School of Guomai Information and the School of Internet Economics and Business at Fujian University of Technology, China. He was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Information Management at National Changhua University of Education, Taiwan. He received his Ph.D. in International Business from National Chi Nan University, Taiwan. His current research interests include consumer behavior, e-commerce, and Internet marketing. He has published papers in journals such as International Journal of Information Management, Thinking Skills and Creativity, Internet Research, Journal of Business Research, Online Information Review, Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, and Food Quality and Preference.
Yi-Shun Wang is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Information Management at the National Changhua University of Education, Taiwan. He received his Ph.D. in MIS from National Chengchi University, Taiwan. His current research interests include information and educational technology adoption strategies, IS success models, online user behavior, knowledge management, Internet entrepreneurship education, and e-learning. He has published papers in journals such as Academy of Management Learning and Education, Information Systems Journal, Information & Management, International Journal of Information Management, Government Information Quarterly, Internet Research, Computers & Education, British Journal of Educational Technology, Interactive Learning Environments, Computers in Human Behavior, International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, Information Technology and People, Information Technology and Management, Journal of Educational Computing Research, among others. He is currently serving as the Chairman for the Research Discipline of Applied Science Education in the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan.
Jing-Wei Hsu holds a master’s degree from the Department of Information Management at National Changhua University of Education. He received his bachelor’s degree in information management from National Changhua University of Education. His research interest includes Internet entrepreneurship education, e-commerce, and online user behavior. His work has been published in several academic conferences.
Shin-jeng Lin is a Professor in the Department of Management, Leadership and Information Systems at Le Moyne College, USA. He received his Ph.D. in Information Science from Rutgers University, USA. His current research interests include information seeking process, design and evaluation of interactive user interfaces, acceptance and adoption of innovative technologies. He has published in journals such as Academy of Management Learning and Education, Internet Research, Information Technology and Management, Computers & Education, Online Information Review, Thinking Skills and Creativity, Journal of American Society for Information Science and Technology, Information Processing and Management, Journal of Educational Computing Research, and Journal of Computer Information Systems.