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Employee social media use and creativity: exploring the mediating role of psychological need satisfaction and the moderating role of conscientiousness

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Abstract

Empirical evidence has accumulated showing that social media use is an effective tool for stimulating employees’ creativity. However, knowledge about why and when social media use relates to creativity is limited. The present study examined the relationship between social media use and creativity, the mediating role of psychological need satisfaction, and the moderating role of conscientiousness. The participants were 462 full-time employees recruited from multiple industries in China. Path analyses and bootstrap** were conducted to examine the hypotheses using SPSS 22.0 and MPLUS 7.4. The results showed that social media use was positively associated with psychological need satisfaction, and that psychological need satisfaction was positively associated with creativity. Moreover, psychological need satisfaction mediated the relationship between social media use and creativity. Finally, conscientiousness accentuated the positive relationship between social media use and psychological need satisfaction, as well as the indirect positive relationship between social media use and creativity through psychological need satisfaction. These findings provide insights into the mechanism and boundary conditions pertinent to management’s guidance of employees’ social media use and enhancement of their creativity.

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Data availability

The study’s design and its analysis were not preregistered. The data and syntax that support the findings of this study can be accessed at https://osf.io/f4wpv/?view_only=6eb1b5f021b749c899eef23d354d177c.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71,862,004].

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  1. School of Management, **an University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

    Meilan Nong & Jiamin Li

  2. School of Business, Guangxi University, Nanning, Guangxi, 530004, China

    Huimin Wei

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Meilan Nong Conceptualization, Investigation, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing -review & editing, Visualization, Formal analysis. Huimin Wei Conceptualization, Writing - review & editing, Funding, Supervision. Jiamin Li Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing - original draft. 

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Nong, M., Wei, H. & Li, J. Employee social media use and creativity: exploring the mediating role of psychological need satisfaction and the moderating role of conscientiousness. Curr Psychol 43, 2847–2858 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04521-4

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