TY  - JOUR
A1  - Meythaler, Antonia
A1  - Krause, Hannes-Vincent
A1  - Baumann, Annika
A1  - Krasnova, Hanna
A1  - Thatcher, Jason Bennett
T1  - The rise of metric-based digital status
T2  - European Journal of Information Systems
N2  - Widespread on social networking sites (SNSs), envy has been linked to an array of detrimental outcomes for users’ well-being. While envy has been considered a status-related emotion and is likely to be experienced in response to perceiving another’s higher status, there is a lack of research exploring how status perceptions influence the emergence of envy on SNSs. This is important because SNSs typically quantify social interactions and reach with metrics that indicate users’ relative rank and status in the network. To understand how status perceptions impact SNS users, we introduce a new form of metric-based digital status rooted in SNS metrics that are available and visible on a platform. Drawing on social comparison theory and status literature, we conducted an online experiment to investigate how different forms of status contribute to the proliferation of envy on SNSs. Our findings shed light on how metric-based digital status influences feelings of envy on SNSs. Specifically, we could show that metric-based digital status impacts envy through increasing perceptions of others’ socioeconomic and sociometric statuses. Our study contributes to the growing discourse on the negative outcomes associated with SNS use and its consequences for users and society.
KW  - social networking sites
KW  - metric-based digital status
KW  - social comparisons
KW  - social status
KW  - envy
KW  - experiment
Y1  - 2023
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/63124
SN  - 0960-085X
SN  - 1476-9344
SP  - 1
EP  - 28
PB  - Taylor and Francis
CY  - London
ER  -