The Self-Expressiveness of Footprints: Understanding the Drivers of Check-in

Drawing from the Dramaturgical theory (Goffman, 1959), present study contributes to propose a conceptual model that illuminate the underlying psychological mechanism which faciliate individual’s check-in behavior. Goffman (1959) posits that “impression management” impacts the self presentation of individuals, indicating that individuals adopt deliberate decisions to reveal particular aspects of the self. Past studies emphasize on the privacy issue that impacts location sharing (Barkhuus et al., 2008), while present study highlights that socially driven factors portrays a more comprehensive story that disclose the antecedenting drivers of check-in.This contributes in providing a framework to the previous sporadic studies concerning social motives in check-in literatures. Specifically, the findings support the view that individual’s public self-consciousness and peer influence, compelled by desirable self-presentation leads to involvment in check-in. This finding extends past researches in identifying two dimensions that drive check-in involvement. Furthermore, the results of this study confirm that driven by psychological proximity, a positive relationship is created between check-in involvement and place attachment, which in turn faciliates continual check-in behavioral intentions and the advocation of check-in.