Association of phone app usage with personalities

Abstract

Apps are an indispensable part of our life, especially at the current time when the smartphone has become ubiquitous. Research on mobile behaviour has shown that 85% of our time is spent using apps on smartphones, offering the opportunity for massive unobtrusive data collection. Recent research suggests that app usage can be affected by users’ personality. However, little research has explored the relationship between personality and app usage.

The objective of this thesis is to determine the association between personality and app usage, as well to observe the relationship between app usage and social capital. In order to accomplish this, the personality traits and social capital of 29 consenting Chinese students were identified using a self-evaluated questionnaire survey, and information on app usage was collected using the AWARE app. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and the Partial Least Square Path Model (PLS-PM).

Correlation analysis of the descriptive statistics indicated some evidence for a relationship be-tween personality traits and specific app usage. The result from PLS-PM showed several associa-tions between personality and app usage. For example, the ‘neurotic’ personality, who worries about things, tends to use weather apps more frequently. The ‘openness to experience’ personality, who likes to reflect and play with ideas, tends to spend more time on shopping apps. The person with low conscientiousness score, which indicates less organized skill, tends to use more time on entertainment, music and setting apps. Surprisingly, no strong associations, however, was found be-tween extrovert personality and social networking apps in this study.

A weak association was also discovered between social capital and app usage, such as longer time usage on Wechat (a popular communication app in China) may be linked to high scores in maintained social capital. More frequent usage on Zhifubao (a popular mobile pay app in China) may improve online bridging social capital. However, results from PLS-PM needs careful interpretation because of the small sample size and sample collection bias.

The result of the association between personality and app usage will not only help app designers to develop optimal app user interfaces for target users, but also enhance the recommendations to more accurately and efficiently optimize the relevance of the suggestions offered to users.