Showing Off? Human Mobility and the Interplay of Traits, Self-Disclosure, and Facebook Check-Ins

Abstract

Mobile and location-based media refer to technologies that can openly and dynamically portray the characteristics of the users and their mundane life. Facebook check-ins highlights physical and informational mobility of the users relating individual activities into spaces. This study explored how personality traits like extraversion and narcissism function to influence self-disclosure that, in turn, impacts the intensity of check-ins on Facebook. Using survey data collected through Facebook check-in users in Taiwan ( N = 523), the results demonstrated that although extraversion and narcissism might not directly impact check-in intensity on Facebook, the indirect effects of self-disclosure and exhibitionism were particularly salient. Moreover, a complete path from extraversion to Facebook check-in through self-disclosure and exhibitionism was discovered. Theoretical implications on human mobility and selective self-presentation are also discussed.