Why would you do that? predicting the uses and gratifications behind smartphone-usage behaviors

Abstract

While people often use smartphones to achieve specific goals, at other times they use them out of habit or to pass the time. Uses and Gratifications Theory explains that users' motivations for engaging with technology can be divided into instrumental and ritualistic purposes. Instrumental uses of technology are goal-directed and purposeful, while ritualistic uses are habitual and diversionary. In this paper, we provide an empirical account of the nature of instrumental vs. ritualistic use of smartphones based on data collected from 43 Android users over 2 weeks through logging application use and collecting ESM survey data about the purpose of use. We describe the phone-use behaviors users exhibit when seeking instrumental and ritualistic gratifications, and we develop a classification scheme for predicting ritualistic vs. instrumental use with an accuracy of 77% for a general model, increasing to more than 97% with a sliding confidence threshold. We discuss how such a model might be used to improve the experience of smartphone users in application areas such as recommender systems and social media.