Complementary or supplementary? Understanding users’ unfollowing behavior from the perspective of person-environment fit

The loss of followers poses a severe threat to the development of microblogging platforms and bloggers. However, the reasons behind users’ unfollowing behavior remain unclear. Drawing on the person-environment fit framework, we examined how different types of person-environment misfits affect users’ unfollowing intention and the relationship between these misfits. We collected the data to test the research model from 305 Weibo users via an online survey. The results suggest that from the perspective of complementary misfit, information overload increases social media fatigue, and information irrelevance increases followers’ expectation disconfirmation. From the perspective of supplementary misfit, perceived value dissimilarity positively affects followers’ fatigue and disconfirmation. These negative psychological states consequently lead to followers’ unfollowing intention. Furthermore, our results revealed the positive effects of perceived value dissimilarity on information overload and information irrelevance. We also discuss the theoretical contributions and practical implications of this study.