Proactive Opinion Expression Avoidance about Same-Sex Marriage on Social Media: Acceptance, Reactance, and Self-Censorship

This study examines Facebook users’ intentions to adopt proactive opinion expression avoidance strategies (hide a post, unfollow, temporarily snooze, and unfriend a contact) when reacting to opposing views, using the legalization of same-sex marriage in Taiwan as the focal issue. Two personal attributes—psychological reactance and willingness to self-censor—are incorporated into the technology acceptance model to verify dispositional and technological influences on user intention. The results of an online survey (N = 910) confirm that Facebook users prone to self-censorship—and expressing higher levels of reactance—are more likely to adopt this set of strategies. Moreover, study findings identify the pivotal roles of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of the strategies that mediate the adoption process. Implications are discussed to help enrich knowledge about the determinants of proactive opinion expression avoidance behaviors and to broaden the application of this research topic, in domains ranging from politics to social issues.