Motivation and Reuse: How Does Motivation Affect Sustainable Use Intention for Brand Webtoons?

This study explores consumers’ motivations for sustainable consumption in the context of branded content marketing. By focusing on brand webtoons, which are one of the most commonly used formats of branded content, this study investigates the link between consumers’ motivations for using brand webtoons and their continuous use intentions. The identified use motives are entertaining information, social conformity, and convenience, and among these three dimensions, entertaining information influences attitude towards brand webtoons and need for self-expression most strongly. Consumers’ need for self-expression is found to be a potential predictor of sustainable intention to consume brand webtoons via the mediating role of attitude towards the webtoons. The findings from this study fill the literature gap in the context of content marketing by exploring motives for and consequences of consuming brand webtoons, which may, in turn, help in encouraging and reinforcing sustainable use intention for branded content. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.