Time-of-Day Effects on Consumers’ Social Media Engagement

Imagine that it is early in the morning and you have a couple of minutes to spend on Twitter. Which article would you “like” more: an article that guarantees a fun time with its catchy title or one that signals long-term benefits with its profound title? Would your pattern of “likes” change by the evening? Is it possible that the pattern depends on whether the information is perceived to be a virtue (i.e., not tempting, but offering later benefits) or a vice (i.e., tempting, but with few later benefits)? In four studies, including one using data from Twitter, we demonstrate time-of-day effects such that the consumption of vice (relative to virtue) increases as morning turns to evening. Engagement with social media continues to grow, and US firms are expected to spend $67 billion on digital advertising by 2021 (Fisher 2017). Consequently, consumer behavior researchers have started to explore the psychology that underlies engagement over social media (Barasch and Berger 2014; Toubia and Stephen 2013; Wilcox and Stephen 2013). What remains unexplored, however, is how social media engagement may change through the day, and if there is any asymmetry in engagement with different types of content. We show that the time of day matters, and matters differently for vices versus virtues. Our theorizing follows from the literature of self-control. Just as muscles are weakened after physical exertion, self-control weakens after subsequent mental exertions (Muraven and Baumeister 2000). Individuals are faced with multiple self-control challenges through the day, as they try to avoid activities and foods that may be tempting, but are not good for them in the long run. Exerting self-control over and over again is depleting. Consequently, self-control is strongest in the early hours of a day but weakens as the day progresses (Dai et al. 2015; Kouchaki and Smith 2014). What is not yet understood is how self-control depletion may emerge for information consumption. One may simply expect depletion effects of the kind that have been observed earlier. That is, because consumers get tired through the day, they process less information because they are not left with adequate resources to read and understand more information. We reveal a different result.