Employee social media use and creativity: exploring the mediating role of psychological need satisfaction and the moderating role of conscientiousness

Empirical evidence has accumulated showing that social media use is an effective tool for stimulating employees' creativity. However, knowledge about why and when social media use relates to creativity is limited. The present study examined the relationship between social media use and creativity, the mediating role of psychological need satisfaction, and the moderating role of conscientiousness. The participants were 462 full-time employees recruited from multiple industries in China. Path analyses and bootstrapping were conducted to examine the hypotheses using SPSS 22.0 and MPLUS 7.4. The results showed that social media use was positively associated with psychological need satisfaction, and that psychological need satisfaction was positively associated with creativity. Moreover, psychological need satisfaction mediated the relationship between social media use and creativity. Finally, conscientiousness accentuated the positive relationship between social media use and psychological need satisfaction, as well as the indirect positive relationship between social media use and creativity through psychological need satisfaction. These findings provide insights into the mechanism and boundary conditions pertinent to management's guidance of employees' social media use and enhancement of their creativity.