| Communication media choice research has passed through three distinct stages in the past 30 years. In the 1970s and 1980s social presence and media richness were the dominant theories. In concert with a rapid expansion of communication technologies available in the 1990s social influence theory rose to prominence. In recent years there has been a general acceptance that some aspects of each of these approaches must be included to explain communication media choice. However, there have been no studies that show which aspects of these theories interact or how they interact. Synthesizing key aspects of all three approaches, this dissertation develops a theoretical model that illustrates how characteristics from all of the central theories of media choice both directly and interactively drive an individual's communication media choice.; A two-stage qualitative and quantitative methodology identified and tested the effects of a core set of message and recipient characteristics on media choice. The results show that media richness and social presence factors, including volume, equivocality, time sensitivity, and negative affect of the information to be communicated, have strong, direct effects on individual choice. However, moderating effects from social influence characteristics rooted in the senders' knowledge of the recipient's media preferences and experiential effects from having worked with the recipient demonstrate the complex interactions that drive individual communication media choice.; The findings from this study contribute to the current literature in multiple ways. First, the identification key task factors that have very strong direct effects on media choice illuminates why there have been so many mixed findings in the research to date. Inclusion of any one of these factors in a research study could easily mask the effects of another, weaker factor. Second, the methodology herein supports the identification of not only how media richness, social presence, social influence, and contingent factors interact, but also which specific media senders are most likely to choose in particular circumstances. Furthermore, it is shown that regardless of the number of media available, senders effectively limit their choice to face-to-face, telephone, and email communication. |
