A Comparative Study of the Effects of Consumer Innovativeness, Self-esteem, and Need for Cognition on Online Activity before and after COVID-19

Abstract

This study tried to identify factors affecting online activity before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, the effects of consumer innovativeness, self-esteem, and need for cognition on the activity of online media such as Internet and social media were investigated, and whether privacy concerns had a moderating effect. For this study, survey data from 2019(before the outbreak of COVID-19) to 2021(after the outbreak of COVID-19) of the ’Korea Media Panel Survey’ surveyed by the Korea Information Society Development Institute was used for analysis. The research results that affect Internet activity are as follows. Before the outback of COVID-19, it was found that hedonic innovativeness and social innovativeness had a positive effect and cognitive innovativeness had a negative effect on increasing Internet activity. There was no moderating effect on privacy concerns. The period after the outbreak of COVID-19, need for cognition was found to have a positive effect on increasing social media activity. In addition, the moderating effect of privacy concerns was found in the relationship between need for cognition and Internet activity. There was no privacy concern effect before the outbreak of COVID-19, and the privacy concern effect appeared on functional innovation and need for cognition after the outbreak of COVID-19. This study aims to present various implications for companies to understand the characteristics of online consumers using the Internet and social media after the pandemic.