=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2730/paper5
|storemode=property
|title=Being involved in the neighborhood through people-nearby applications: a study deepening their social and community-related uses, face-to-face meetings among users, and local community experience
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2730/paper5.pdf
|volume=Vol-2730
|authors=Flora Gatti,Fortuna Procentese
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/psychobit/GattiP20
}}
==Being involved in the neighborhood through people-nearby applications: a study deepening their social and community-related uses, face-to-face meetings among users, and local community experience==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2730/paper5.pdf
Being Involved in the Neighborhood through People-
Nearby Applications: A Study Deepening Their Social
and Community-Related Uses, Face-to-Face Meetings
among Users, and Local Community Experience*
Flora Gatti[0000-0003-2149-6570] and Fortuna Procentese[0000-0002-1617-0165]
Department of Humanities, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
flora.gatti@unina.it
Abstract. People-Nearby Applications (PNAs) social and community-related
uses could represent an alternative way to live urban spaces and sociability
when citizens experience offline constraints in doing so in their city or neigh-
borhood. Indeed, the features of PNAs suggest that they could represent reliable
tools to glue local social fabrics, enhancing their local community experience.
Thus, this study aims at deepening whether PNAs social (i.e., for friend-
ship/network) and specifically community-related (i.e., for location-based
searching of new people to meet) uses can improve citizens’ local community
experience through fostering face-to-face meetings with other users nearby and
a more involved way of living their neighborhoods at last. An online question-
naire was administered to 302 Italian PNAs users. The results show that only
PNAs the community-related use associates with more frequent face-to-face
meetings with other users nearby and with a more involved way of living one’s
neighborhood via this frequency. Conversely, no significant association
emerged for PNAs social use. These results suggest that PNAs can improve us-
ers’ local community experience as they seem able to enhance local social rela-
tionships and their users’ feeling of involvement in their neighborhood through
fostering new local acquaintances and interactions and further opportunities to
live local common places and socialize. Moreover, this supports the insights
about PNAs role and potentialities as an alternative path to rely on for users
having unmet aggregative needs yet experiencing constraints in straightly living
their neighborhood through enjoying urban spaces and local sociability.
Keywords: People-Nearby Applications (PNAs), location-based applications,
social media community-related uses, local communities, neighborhoods.
Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons Li-
cense Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
2
1 Introduction
People-Nearby Applications (PNAs) are mobile applications relying on mobile devic-
es Global Positioning System (GPS) to allow their users to discover new people near-
by to meet and interact with according to their physical location or geographical prox-
imity [1]. Since the most known and used PNAs are Tinder, Grindr, and other similar
dating applications, this kind of mobile applications has been mainly studied with
reference to romantic and/or sexual needs, motives, and outcomes [e.g., 2, 3, 4, 5].
Nevertheless, PNAs can also provide their users with social and community-related
gratifications, like extending their social networks, meeting new people nearby, enter-
ing the local social network, and feeling part of the surrounding community [1, 6, 7].
Indeed, through exposing their users to new places, people, pieces of information, and
social gatherings [6, 8], PNAs allow a remapping of the surrounding social and physi-
cal spaces [7, 9, 10], which can now be enriched by what is known and seen through
the lens of these applications [1]. Consistently, they can produce new social connec-
tions among community members and between them and their life places and con-
texts, fostering wider local social networks at last [8, 11]. Due to these peculiarities,
these applications have huge potentialities for creating new connections among mem-
bers of the same local community (i.e., city or neighborhood), since they can foster
social interactions among unknown people from different social groups being nearby
[1, 10] and, potentially, face-to-face meetings among them at last.
These represent critical challenges within modern local communities, whose tradi-
tional social functions have been weakened. Indeed, recent global phenomena have
brought about a gradual instrumentalization of urban spaces and sociability, which are
mainly lived through interacting with already known people, even though they often
offer wider social opportunities and gatherings [12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20].
Consistently, local social interactions, traditionally providing community members
with physical and social resources to rely on [21] and an open-minded, interested and
inclusive behavior [22, 23] at the individual level while enhancing reciprocal proximi-
ty and acknowledgment and shared meanings and visions at community level [22, 24,
25, 26], have become more hardly attainable.
Taking into account these challenges modern local community features pose to
community members, it has recently been suggested that PNAs social and communi-
ty-related uses could represent alternative strategies adopted by citizens feeling that
their local community has some constraints weakening its social fabric and traditional
social functions [17, 27]. Indeed, everyone chooses which social media to use and
how based on their unmet needs and goals and on how the specific features and uses
of each social media promise to meet them [28, 29]. Consistently, when the neighbor-
hood is somehow hindering its members’ opportunities to meet new people in local
common spaces, citizens feeling that their social and aggregative needs have been left
unmet by their local community and social relationships may use PNAs with social
and/or community-related aims as an alternative path to rely on to satisfy these needs.
Specifically, in partially closed neighborhoods, where social opportunities are availa-
ble yet hardly attainable for community members due to some neighborhood features
[30], PNAs could represent a reliable tool to reconnect the local social fabric and
3
foster more involved and active ways of living the surrounding physical and social
context [1, 10, 17], since they could play a catalyst role for local social encounters
and interactions to happen anyway. Nevertheless, since this is a relative new perspec-
tive which is still underlining, to authors’ best knowledge no study has already deep-
ened the outcomes of PNAs social and community-related uses.
2 Aim of the study
Building on what is already known about PNAs, the present study aims at taking a
further step towards a better understanding of their social and community-related uses
and whether they can improve citizens’ local community experience – that is how
they live their local community and relate to other members within it – through foster-
ing face-to-face meetings among nearby users and a more involved way of living their
neighborhoods at last. Thus, it has been led by three main research questions:
1. do PNAs social uses positively associate with the frequency of face-to-face meet-
ings with other users nearby met through these applications (H1)? Specifically, the
considered social uses are: (a) a solely social one, that is, using PNAs to look for
friendship and extend one’s social network, and (b) a social yet specifically com-
munity-related one, that is, using PNAs for location-based searching of new peo-
ple to meet in the same area. They have been selected among those identified in
previous studies [1, 6, 7] since they were the ones showing their potential in re-
connecting the local social fabric; conversely, PNAs uses mainly relying on indi-
vidual dimensions (e.g., gaining social approval, looking for entertainment) or ex-
plicitly being romantic or sexual ones have been excluded from this study;
2. do PNAs social uses positively associate with users’ perception about them being
involved in their neighborhoods via the frequency of their face-to-face meetings
with other users nearby (H2)?
3. do PNAs social and community-related uses show different patterns of associa-
tions with the frequency of face-to-face meetings with other users nearby and with
users’ perceptions about being involved in their neighborhood?
3 Method
3.1 Participants and Procedures
The participants were 302 Italian PNAs users (57.6% female), aged between 18 and
75 (M = 30.99; SD = 10.79). To achieve a non-college sample, they were recruited via
snowball sampling through sharing the questionnaire in some Facebook groups about
Italian PNAs users (e.g., I Gentlemen di Grindr, Tinder and the City, Tinder Italiano)
and through word of mouth among PNAs users. They received no compensation for
participating in the study. The questionnaire was introduced by an explanation about
confidentiality and anonymity issues, wherein the participants had to express their
informed consent to take part in the study. No IP addresses or other identifying data
were retained.
4
Most of the participants were heterosexual (74.5%), while 13.2% were homosexu-
al, and 10.3% bisexual; six respondents (2%) did not provide this information. About
half of them (43.4%) lived in a major city and 21.9% in a city, while 16.9% in a place
near a major city, 15.2% in a village, and 2.6% in a rural area. They had been living in
their neighborhood for 17.89 years on average (SD = 12.05). Most of the participants
were single (70.2%) and did not have children (86.1%), while 14.2% were married or
lived with their partner, 7.6% were involved in an unmarried and non-cohabitant rela-
tionship, 7.6% were separated or divorced, and one participant was widower.
Of the participants, 41.1% had a High School diploma as their highest educational
title and 26.2% a bachelor’s degree, while 12.9% had a post-degree title, 10.9% a
Secondary School diploma, and 8.9% a master’s degree title. As of their employment,
36.8% were employees and 32.8% students, while 13.9% were freelance profession-
als, 3% business owners, and 2.3% had managerial positions; only one participant was
retiree and 9.9% were unemployed.
3.2 Measures
The questionnaire included a socio-demographic section, followed by these measures.
PNAs Use for Friendship/Network. Five items (e.g., “Build my social/friendship
network”) by Van De Wiele and Tong [7] were adapted so that they did not specifical-
ly refer to gay men and used to detect this PNAs use. Respondents were asked to rate
their agreement with each item on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly disagree; 7 =
Strongly agree).
PNAs Use for Location-Based Searching. Three items (e.g., “Meet other people
in the area”) by Van De Wiele and Tong [7] were adapted so that they did not specif-
ically refer to gay men and used to detect this PNAs use. Respondents were asked to
rate their agreement with each item on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly disagree; 7
= Strongly agree).
Frequency of Face-to-Face Meetings with Other Users. The frequency with
which the respondents were used to meet face-to-face the people they had met
through these applications was detected through the item “How often do you meet
offline the people you meet through PNAs on average?”, whose answer was on a 7-
point Likert scale (1 = Never; 7 = Very often).
Living the Neighborhood in an Involved Way. Participants’ feelings about be-
ing part of their neighborhood and participating in it was detected through the item
“How much do you feel part of and participate in your neighborhood?”, which re-
quired an answer on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = Nothing at all; 7 = At all).
3.3 Data Analyses
For the items about PNAs uses [7], the back-translation method was used since there
was no Italian translation available. Thus, previously to hypotheses testing for each
measure Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA) were run with Structural Equation
Modeling (SEM) using the maximum likelihood estimator. To evaluate the model fit,
the Comparative Fit Index (CFI) and the Standardized Root Mean square Residual
5
(SRMR) were observed [31]. For CFI, values equal to or higher than .90 e .95 reflect
respectively good or excellent fit indices; for SRMR, values equal to or smaller than
.06 e .08 reflect respectively good or reasonable fit indices [32]. The reliability was
checked through Cronbach’s alphas.
To test all the hypotheses, a multiple mediation model was run using SEM. It in-
cluded the two PNAs uses (i.e., friendship/network and location-based searching of
new people to meet) as the independent variables, users’ perceptions about living their
neighborhood in an involved way as the dependent one, and the frequency of face-to-
face meetings with other users met through these applications as the mediator. To
evaluate the model fit, CFI and SRMR were observed again [31]. In the face of signif-
icant direct and/or indirect effects of both uses on the frequency of face-to-face meet-
ings and/or on the perceptions about living their neighborhood in an involved way,
Wald’s test would have been used to determine whether the effects of the two consid-
ered PNAs uses significantly differed, in order to answer the third research question:
if the test returns a significant result, the considered effects are different.
Bootstrap estimation with 10,000 samples was used to test the significance of the
results [33] and the bias-corrected 95% confidence interval (BC 95% CI) was com-
puted: the effects are significant when the 0 is not included in the CI.
4 Results
Both PNAs uses confirmed their one-factor structure with good fit indices: for friend-
ship/network, CFI = .96, SRMR = .04; for location-based searching, CFI = .99,
SRMR = .001. For factor loadings, see Figures 1 and 2.
Reliability indices, descriptive statistics, and correlations for all the measures are
in Table 1.
Model results are summarized in Table 2 and shown in Figure 3. The model
showed good fit indices, CFI = .94, SRMR = .05, yet H1 and H2 were only partially
confirmed. Indeed, PNAs use for location-based searching of new people to meet was
the only one showing a direct, positive, effect on the frequency of face-to-face meet-
ings with other users met through these applications and an indirect, positive, effect
on users’ perceptions about living their neighborhood in an involved way via the fre-
quency of these meetings. Conversely, PNAs use to look for friendship and to extend
one’s social network showed no significant effect. Thus, no Wald’s test was run.
5 Discussion
The present study was aimed at shedding light on PNAs social and community-related
uses, specifically tackling their potentialities in fostering a more involving local
community experience through the opportunities they create for face-to-face meetings
among neighbors who did not know each other before. Indeed, returning to communi-
ty members manageable opportunities to create new local connections and interac-
tions represents a critical challenge in modern communities, whose traditional social
and aggregative functions have been weakened due to the gradual privatization of
6
Figure 1. Factor loadings for the PNAs Use for Friendship/Network items.
Item 1
Item 2
PNAs Use for
1.70 *** (0.06)
Item 3 Friendship/
Network
Item 4
Item 5
Note. n = 302.
Unstandardized coefficients (B) are shown; standard errors (SE) are in brackets.
*** p < .001 (2-tailed).
Figure 2. Factor loadings for the PNAs Use for Location-Based Searching items.
Item 1
PNAs Use for
1.74 *** (0.09)
Item 2 Location-Based
Searching
Item 3
Note. n = 302.
Unstandardized coefficients (B) are shown; standard errors (SE) are in brackets.
*** p < .001 (2-tailed).
Table 1. Summary of reliability indices, descriptive statistics, and correlations.
Variables α Range M SD 1 2 3
1. PNAs Use for Friendship/Network .87 1-7 3.39 1.60 -
2. PNAs Use for Location-Based
.83 1-7 3.16 1.69 .403 *** -
Searching
3. Frequency of Face-to-Face Meetings
- 1-7 3.94 1.91 .132 * .292 *** -
with Other Users
4. Living the Neighborhood in an In-
- 1-7 3.87 1.66 .022 .009 .168 **
volved Way
Note. n = 302.
*** p < .001 (2-tailed); ** p < .01 (2-tailed); * p < .05 (2-tailed).
α = Cronach’s alpha; M = mean; SD = standard deviation.
7
Table 2. Mediation model results.
BC 95%
Paths B (SE)
CI
Direct effects
PNAs Use for Friendship/Network → Frequency of Face-to-Face Meet- 0.04 [-0.06,
ings with Other Users (0.05) 0.15]
PNAs Use for Friendship/Network → Living the Neighborhood in an -0.005 [-0.10,
Involved Way (0.05) 0.09]
PNAs Use for Location-Based Searching → Frequency of Face-to-Face 0.35 *** [0.19,
Meetings with Other Users (0.08) 0.51]
PNAs Use for Location-Based Searching → Living the Neighborhood in -0.06 [-0.20,
an Involved Way (0.07) 0.09]
Frequency of Face-to-Face Meetings with Other Users → Living the 0.16 ** [0.04,
Neighborhood in an Involved Way (0.06) 0.27]
Indirect effects
PNAs Use for Friendship/Network → Frequency of Face-to-Face Meet- 0.01 [-0.01,
ings with Other Users → Living the Neighborhood in an Involved Way (0.01) 0.03]
PNAs Use for Location-Based Searching → Frequency of Face-to-Face
0.06 * [0.02,
Meetings with Other Users → Living the Neighborhood in an Involved
(0.02) 0.12]
Way
Note. n = 302.
*** p < .001 (2-tailed); ** p < .01 (2-tailed); * p < .05 (2-tailed).
B = unstandardized coefficient; SE = standard error; BC 95% CI = bias-corrected 95% con-
fidence interval.
Figure 3. Mediation model results.
PNAs Use for
Friendship/
Network
Living the
Frequency of Face- 0.16 ** Neighborhood
to-Face Meetings (0.06) in an Involved
Way
PNAs Use for
Location-Based
Searching
direct effect
indirect effect
Note. n = 302.
Unstandardized coefficients (B) are shown; standard errors (SE) are in brackets.
*** p < .001 (2-tailed); ** p < .01 (2-tailed); * p < .05 (2-tailed).
8
urban spaces and sociability [12, 13, 14, 17]. Consistently, a solely social use (i.e., for
friendship/network) and a social and specifically community-related one (i.e., for
location-based searching of people to meet) were considered, to test their association
with the frequency of face-to-face meetings with other users met through these appli-
cations and with users’ perception about living their neighborhood in an involved way
via the frequency of these face-to-face meetings. The hypotheses were only partially
confirmed, since the community-related use showed both the expected positive asso-
ciations yet the solely social one showed none of them.
These results provide some interesting hints about the needs underlying these two
similar yet different PNAs social uses. Indeed, building on the acknowledgment that
social media users actively select which social media to use and how based on their
unmet needs and on how the features and uses of each social media are considered
able to meet them [28, 29], PNAs social uses had been hypothesized as relying on
both social and aggregative unmet needs, traditionally satisfied by friendly and neigh-
borly relationships in local communities which are no longer exerting this role [17,
30]. However, what emerges from this study suggests a further specification of this
main idea: indeed, only the specifically community-related use associates with more
frequent face-to-face meetings with other users and with a stronger feeling of being
involved in one’s neighborhood, while the solely social one proved not to associate
with either of them. Consistently, it seems reasonable to rather tackle separately the
social and the aggregative needs underlying these two PNAs uses. Indeed, the differ-
ent patterns of relationships emerged suggest that these two uses bring about different
local outcomes and interactions, presumably in the attempt to satisfy the different
needs they rely on. Specifically, the positive association with face-to-face meetings
suggests that when users have a local focus and wish for more local acquaintances
and interactions they mean PNAs not as an “easier” way to relate with others through
taking advantage of online communications but rather as a complement to their al-
ready existing yet unsatisfactory offline opportunities to meet new, not-yet-known,
people nearby [17]. Conversely, the lack of association of the solely social use could
suggest that it rather relies on a more specific yet abstract need to communicate with
new people and feel part of a wider social network, which can also be virtual.
Moreover, the present results suggest that PNAs community-related use could rep-
resent a modern reliable tool to enhance users’ active and involved experience of their
local community through fostering a higher frequency of face-to-face meetings with
other people in the same area. Indeed, when using PNAs with the specific aim to meet
new people nearby, users may be more inclined to set face-to-face encounters with the
users they come in contact with and this could in turn bring them to meet in local
common spaces. This could in turn increase their perception about being involved in
their neighborhood in terms of meeting other community members face-to-face in
common places, participating in shared activities, and feeling a part of the neighbor-
hood community at last [16, 24].
What emerges seems consistent with the suggestions about the rise of a new kind
of local socialization process [6, 34] based upon the integration between interactions
and shared social spaces within local communities and online environments and op-
portunities, which could become possible taking advantage of ubiquitous mobile ap-
9
plications, like PNAs [17]. This new socialization process could break the boundaries
between online and offline spaces and dynamics, but also those between different
subgroups and subcultures within the same local community, which could be due to
mistrust, indifference, and lack of reciprocal acknowledgment [12, 13, 14, 15, 16].
Altogether, since mobile social applications are always more frequent in daily
lives and relationships [35], deepening the social processes and dynamics rising from
their intersection with offline physical and social environments in terms of benefits
and risks for their users seems a critical issue. Specifically, the present results support
the insights about the potentialities that PNAs community-related use could have in
enhancing the relationships among nearby users and between users and their local
communities meant both as physical shared spaces and as social contexts [1, 8, 10, 11,
17]. Indeed, through fostering new opportunities for local encounters among neigh-
bors this specific PNAs use could enhance citizens’ reciprocal support and acknowl-
edgment, the perception about neighbors respecting each other, common spaces, and
shared norms, and the one about being involved in their neighborhood community,
which are all compounding elements fostering the adoption of a more responsible way
of living together and interacting within one’s local community [13, 36].
5.1 Limitations and Future Directions
This study is not free from limitations. First, the findings rely on self-reported data,
which can be distorted by memory bias and response fatigue. Moreover, the sampling
strategy allowed to reach a broad range of PNAs users yet may have led to a sort of
self-selection bias. However, even though the sample is not representative, it goes
beyond student samples providing validity to the results.
Lastly, since the study has a cross-sectional design, the described relationships
should be considered carefully and cannot allow inferences on the direction of causal-
ity.
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