Emotional reasons and not practical ones influence people to buy bigger smartphones

Washington: A new study suggests that emotional reasons might influence people's decision to buy smartphones with bigger screens even more than practical ones.

"There are basically two different reasons that 'bigger is better' for screen size: utilitarian reasons and affective, or emotional, reasons," Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory, Penn State said.

"There are so many things on smartphones that we can use, but an even more powerful factor of the larger screen is its hedonic aspect-how attractive and pleasing it is to users," he said.

People may find bigger screens more emotionally satisfying because they are using smartphones for entertainment, as well as for communication purposes.

"The screen size has increased the bandwidth of user interactions on smartphones, making it more than a talking-texting device," Sundar said.

"With high definition screens, people now can watch television and movies, as well as multi-task, something that wasn't possible in earlier smartphone versions," he said.

The desire for larger screens that drives purchases of other entertainment devices may be part of the impulse to buy smartphones with larger screens, Ki Joon Kim, adjunct professor in the department of interaction science, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea, who worked with Sundar on the study, said.