Recreational e-reading behaviour in adults' everyday life

Abstract

Frequent recreational reading of fiction is associated with various positive life outcomes, a strong reading ability, and a high socio-economic status. Despite of its importance, few adults read for pleasure in their free time, most often due to lack of time. To support adults in reading more often, we need information on how individuals read, especially on electronic platforms.

Most of previous work has relied on self-reports and lab-based approaches to understand variance in reading behaviour. However, these methods are biased by errors in retrospective recall and low ecological validity, and as a result, we know little about how adults read in the context of their daily lives. In this thesis, we address this research gap by tracking adults’ natural e-reading behaviour unobtrusively on their own digital devices outside of the lab. We make use of two novel methodologies that allow us to capture participants’ reading frequency, persistence in reading a narrative text, frequency of task switching, and variation in text navigation patterns. These methodologies make it possible to study objective reading behaviour without compromising ecological validity.

Previous studies have connected self-reported reading behaviour to readers’ motivation, experience with the electronic reading format, and the context in which a text is read. Across three experimental studies, we evaluate how (1) reader characteristics, such as reading motivation and electronic reading experience, and (2) task-contexts, such as location in text and timing of reading sessions, are connected to observed reading behaviour.

Together the studies provide a comprehensive view on reading behaviour during reading of narrative, electronic long-form texts on a variety of different devices. For the first two studies, we designed and developed a bespoke e-reader web application that participants could access from their own digital devices, such as smartphones and tablets. Embedded tracking features in the e-reader were used to track reading behaviour on the page-level. The first two studies provide rich descriptions of sixty and 729 adults’ natural e-reading behaviour during reading of a short story and a full-length novel, respectively. In the third and final study, we compiled a dataset of reading behaviour from participants’ Amazon Kindle user data. This approach made it possible for us to assess behaviour across multiple years, from many different texts, and on devices that could not be used to access the e-reader web application. In all studies, we collected information on reading motivation and experience with electronic reading platforms using questionnaires.

Across the three studies, our findings suggest that electronic reading behaviour is highly variable. Participants returned to the text multiple times a week; however, disengagements were common and continuous engagements were only 10-15 minutes long. Reading sessions were found to last between 1 minute and 6 hours in duration, and despite of the transportability offered by electronic texts, 78% of them occurred at home. Books and short stories were not read chronologically from the beginning to the end, but instead, 11% of navigation was nonlinear, either backwards in the text or forwards beyond the next page.

Variance in reading behaviour was connected to reader characteristics and task-contexts. The findings showed that avid readers with more contextual motivation towards reading as an activity returned to their selected book more often, they task-switched less frequently, and they adjusted their reading speed more adaptively in relation to text difficulty. Furthermore, situational motivation towards a specific text was associated with higher reading persistence in the second study, and more frequent reading sessions in the third study. The role of electronic reading experience was less conclusive, as the findings differed between the studies: during short story reading, task-relevant experience was connected to text navigation patterns, whereas in the second study participants with more experience of reading task relevant texts were less likely to persist in reading their selected book. Findings on task contexts, on the other hand, showed that readers adjusted their reading speed in relation to their location in text, and they task-switched more frequently while reading outside of the home and while reading on general-purpose devices, such as a smartphone or a laptop, instead of a dedicated e-ink e-reader.

This thesis provides much needed insight into adults’ natural reading behaviour on digital devices. The findings challenge common preconceptions that fiction reading is a homogenous or a chronological activity, suggesting that adults read flexibly in the context of their daily lives. Our novel methodologies provide a middle-ground between self-report studies and lab-based experiments, enhancing our understanding of natural, electronic reading behaviour and its connection to reader characteristics and task-contexts. The results can be used to inform development of effective reading promotions to increase adults’ reading engagement.