Uncertainty Management Behaviour And Its Influencing Factors Of Dating App’s Young Users

The rapid rise of mobile social media in recent years has produced a dramatic shift in the form of interpersonal interactions among youth groups,and the construction of intimate relationships has been widely extended in mobile dating app.The online environment brings together unrelated strangers,and the lack of a shared physical environment and nonverbal cues create uncertainty about others and complicate the process of forming relationships.Based on Uncertainty Management Theory(UMT),this study explores how young users(18 to 35 years old)of mobile dating apps engage in uncertainty management,aiming to understand the communication processes around relationship initiation and how intimate interpersonal relationships develop through social networks.This study uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods,including questionnaires and in-depth interviews,to construct a research framework on motivations for use,concerns about use,desire for uncertainty and information-seeking behaviors.It was found that:(1)users’ relationship needs,virtual privacy concerns,and misrepresentation concerns negatively predicted desire for uncertainty,which means that motivations and concerns influence people’s uncertainty perception;(2)desire for uncertainty negatively predicted information seeking,which indicates that the lower tolerance for uncertainty,the more they would adopt information-seeking strategies;(3)desire for uncertainty plays a mediating role in the process of relationship needs,virtual privacy concerns,and misrepresentation concerns on information seeking;(4)for specific strategies,active and interactive strategies are used to a higher extent,reflecting the characteristics of online communication.In all,dating app users’ responses to uncertainty are not limited to simple reduction strategies,but also depend on their desire for uncertainty,which is affected by pluralistic and switchable motivations,privacy and deception concerns due to digital technologies.Users will actively fight and reduce uncertainty,but there are also concessions and compromises.As social and gender discourses gradually open up and stigma diminishes,more people will engage in alternative practices in dating app.This study depicts the phenomenon of youth dating in social apps,complementing new research perspectives and explanatory views,and also contributing to the predictive power and explanatory utility of UMT in the field of interpersonal communication.