Motives of Adolescents to Use the Internet as a Function of Personality Traits, Personal and Social Factors

Abstract

This study investigates the relation between personality traits (Five-Factor-Model), personal (innovativeness, self-efficacy) and social (expectations or relevant reference groups) Internet related factors on the one hand and three motives (information, entertainment and, interpersonal communication) for going on-line among 122 adolescent Internet users on the other hand. The specificity hypothesis was supported in that Internet-specific personal and social factors together accounted for more variance of the 1nternet use motives than the global personality traits. With regard to the personality traits, neuroticism was found to be positively associated with the entertainment motive and with the interpersonal communication motive and extraversion was positively associated with the communication motive only. The potential of the three Internet motives to predict corresponding types of Internet activities was demonstrated.