What drives me to use TikTok: A latent profile analysis of users’ motives

With TikTok rising in social media, the heterogeneity of users creates diversity in motives for using it. The issue of which profiles of TikTok use motives can be identified warrants greater understanding. Conducting latent profile analyses for a sample of 384 TikTok users, we identified four profiles, namely overall low motives, overall medium motives, overall high motives, and escapist addiction and novelty motives profiles. The former three profiles reflect different levels of motivations across four motives (socially rewarding self-presentation, trendiness, escapist addiction, and novelty). It is worth noting that TikTok users in the escapist addiction and novelty motives profile are mainly motivated by escapist addiction and novelty, but not socially rewarding self-presentation or trendiness motives. Through multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and multinomial logistic regression, we further explore the differences in TikTok use between the profiles and the extent to which users’ background characteristics and TikTok use predict their profile membership. The four profiles differ significantly in terms of the scores of almost all TikTok use motives. The frequency of TikTok use and video posting are the most notable predictors of profile membership. These results make theoretical contributions to the extant literature on social media use profiles by exploring the number and types of latent profiles of TikTok use motives, which also inform opportunities for enhancing user experience and imply tailored content recommendations to both achieve maximized gratifications and maintain mental wellbeing based on user profiles.