How Do Interruptions Affect User Contributions on Social Commerce?

Abstract

Social commerce is an extension of e-commerce, in which social media is leveraged to promote user contributions. Our study asks how interruptions in relation to interface design influence two types of user contributions: creating shared content and appreciating others' content. We use two interface designs, pagination and infinite scrolling, to manipulate the extent of interruptions to social commerce users. On the basis of the capacity theory of attention, we develop five hypotheses. We empirically test our model using a lab experiment and a field study to show that interruptions reduce users' content appreciation but increase their content creation and that user characteristics moderate these effects. The theoretical and practical contributions of our study are discussed. Show more