Content area
Full Text
In this study a Cyber-Relationship Motives Scale was developed and validated to see what motives drive people to make friends on the Internet. The scale was developed in 4 stages: item generation, purification, parsimony, and scale validation. As results of a 4-stage empirical study 9 factors involved in cyber-relationship motives were proposed: anonymity, the opportunity to meet new people, easier communication, curiosity, emotional support, social compensation, away from the real world, love, and sexual partners. These 9 motives were then grouped into 3 dimensions: adventure, escape to a virtual world, and romance.
Keywords: cyber-relationship, online dating, online friendship.
The Internet is currently a popular medium through which to develop interpersonal relationships. Making friends seems to be one of the main activities in which individuals engage when they use the Internet (Kate & Rice, 2009).
In previous studies (Mesch & Talmud, 2006; Peter, Valkenburg, & Schouten, 2005) it has been found that individuals attempt to make friends online for various reasons. For example, Peter and colleagues proposed five motives that spur individuals to communicate online: entertainment, social inclusion, maintaining relationships, meeting new people, and social compensation. Peris et al. (2002) found that individuals chat online to discuss work, hobbies, and topics which they are interested in, experiment in a new communication channel, satisfy their need to socialize, seek friendships, engage in virtual sex, and in an attempt to find a romantic partner.
Although previous researchers have pointed out that the online relationship has become a primary activity on the Internet, few researchers have constructed a comprehensive scale for understanding the motivations for online relationship activities. For both academic and practical researchers, the lack of a comprehensive scale for cyber-relationship motives may be an obstacle to the advanced research of online relationships. Therefore, in this study we developed the Cyber-Relationship Motives (CRM) Scale to assess factors mat may motivate individuals to make friends on Internet.
According to Rubin, Perse, and Barbato (1988), people have diversified communication motives, including pleasure, affection, inclusion, escape, relaxation, and control. These communication motives promote the development of interpersonal relationships online. However, the development of online relationships is different from that of offline relationships because of the features of the Internet (Bonebrake, 2002). As an example, physical attractiveness plays a crucial role...