| The concepts of "learning society" and "lifelong learning" have been practiced by individuals in the information age.As an emerging media,short videos are gradually shaping a new paradigm of knowledge dissemination by virtue of rich information.Under this circumstance,people’s media use behavior of knowledge-based short videos presents the dual characteristics of "instrumental rationality" and "social motives",where instrumental refers to purposeful and practical use motives,and social is considered as interactive sharing,entertainment and enjoyment motives.Three research questions are proposed to identify this concept: Is people’s behavior of watching knowledge-based short videos related to instrumental rationality and pragmatism? Or is sociality motivated by entertainment and perceived interaction influencing more user’s behavior? Under the theoretical framework of UTAUT’s integrated model,this study included both "social" and "instrumental" approaches of media use in the literature review,going through the existing literature on short video user behavior and the relationship between media and self-efficacy.The study also differentiated "social" and "instrumental" by 6 influencing factors,and explored the needs of knowledge-based short video audiences to offer more insights.Based on the existing theory and the characteristic of knowledge-category short videos,this study modified and extended the UTAUT model,with the independent variables including Knowledge Acquisition,Performance Expectation and Convenience Condition for instrumental attributes,and Entertainment Enjoyment,Perceived Interaction and Social Influence for social attributes;the dependent variables include Actual User Behavior and Self-Efficacy.This paper adopted a dual research approach of quantitative survey method and qualitative interview method.The survey questionnaire was distributed to people over 18 years old,and a random sample was used for sampling.The cleaning data were processed through descriptive statistical analysis and Structural Equation Modeling(SEM)by using both SPSS and AMOS 24.0 to explore the relationship between variables and to test the hypotheses.Interviews were also conducted based on questionnaire quotas to supplement findings and extended our exploration.The study found that Performance Expectation,Social Influence,Entertainment,and Perceived Interaction all had significant effects on knowledge-based short video user behavior,while Convenience Condition had no significant effect.Social variables explained knowledge-based short video viewing behavior more significantly and more strongly than instrumental variables,indicating that knowledge-based short video viewing behavior belongs to a social/entertainment-based model,with a balance of utility.Among the predictor variables of self-efficacy,Entertainment,Social Influence and Perceived Interaction also contribute more to the effect of knowledge-based short videos than Convenience Condition,Knowledge Acquisition and Performance Expectation.This result indicates that instrumentality has less influence in the self-efficacy of knowledge-based short video watching behavior,reflecting that short video has effect limitations.Users prioritize this genre of short videos as a space for entertainment and enjoyment.These findings are consistent with the "edutainment" characteristic of knowledge-based short videos found in previous studies. |
