When lifestyle becomes behavior: A closer look at the situational context of mobile communication

• A closer look at situational aspects of usage helps overcome limitations of adoption oriented theories of new media usage.
• We conducted a survey on the situational aspects of mobile communication.
• Three clusters of mobile communication usage situations were deduced: Mobile@home, En route, and Hanging out with peers.
• We also found three clusters of mobile web usage situations: On the way, Homezone, and Work or friends.
• A link between the mobile communication usage situations and lifestyles is highly probable.

The web is going mobile, and the scope of mobile communication is widening tremendously, thus paving the way for a wide array of new forms of mobile device use. However, not every user is necessarily all the time taking advantage of the expanded affordances of mobile devices. Texting and phoning are still the predominant services in mobile communication. Previous research has argued that different styles of mobile communication are related to different user lifestyles. Thus, a remapping and matching of the landscape of mobile communication in relation to user lifestyles seems necessary. In this paper, we take one step back and first consider the instances in which lifestyles become behavior; i.e. actual usage situations of mobile communication. We outline three empirically deduced types of mobile communication usage situations, as well as three types of mobile web usage situations, to shed light on the instant at which lifestyle becomes behavior; i.e. at which specific usage situations of mobile communication actually occur.