A Click for the Good Life? Slacktivism on Facebook and Its Impact on Life Satisfaction

• In Event: Civic Engagement With Social Media

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of so called slacktivism on life satisfaction among users of the Social Network Site Facebook. Our work focuses on the moderating role that user motivation plays in utilizing this new and easy way of civic engagement online, especially on showing support for environmental, nature and animal protection, e.g. by signing an online-petition on Facebook. For this purpose a new scale to assess slacktivism was developed and tested with an online-survey among Facebook users (N= 1345). It revealed a high level of slacktivistic activities among SNS users, regardless of whether they already volunteered offline or not. Using regression modeling, it could be shown that slacktivism determines life satisfaction in a negative way, which is especially true for Facebook users who perform slacktivistic activities with a high intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, preceding criticism of self-expression as main motivation for slacktivism was not supported.

Authors

• Claudia Seifert, Technische Universitaet Dresden

• Jakob Ohme, University of Southern Denmark

• Kerstin Helm, Technische Universitt Dresden

• Lutz M. Hagen, TU Dresden