Social Presence and User-Generated Content of Social Media in China

2.1. Theoretical Foundations

Theoretically, motivation is a driving force of human desire and pursuit and an internal force that elicits certain behaviors. Motivation reflects the incentives for objective things in human activity. The motivation for a person to engage in or direct an activity to satisfy a certain desire or idea pertains to a combination of the need and incentive of the activity.

Social facilitation is also known as the audience effect. Many scholars have argued that social facilitation not only increases the quantity of individual behaviors, but also improves their quality. Worchel, Cooper and Goethals (1991) defined social facilitation as the improvement in the quality of behavioral performance resulting from the presence of audience or co-actors. Triplett argued that social facilitation is any effect of the presence of others on behaviors (Baron & Byrne, 1984) and that it comprises both facilitation and constraint.