Motivations for Proactive and Reactive Trolling on Social Media: Developing and Validating a Four-Factor Model

Abstract

This study proposed a novel typology that categorized online trolling into proactive and reactive types and conducted two studies employing qualitative and quantitative approaches to better understand the motivations behind these two types of trolling. Study 1 surveyed participants who had engaged in trolling ( N = 90) and identified four motivations for online trolling through an inductive qualitative analysis: revenge, maintaining social justice, rebutting for disagreement, and thrill-seeking. Study 2 developed scales to measure the four trolling motivations and validated them through another survey of participants who had engaged in trolling ( N = 455). The quantitative results supported the four-factor motivation of trolling and the proactive–reactive trolling scale. Structural equation modeling revealed that thrill-seeking and rebutting for disagreement were positively associated with proactive trolling, whereas revenge and maintaining social justice were positively associated with reactive trolling. These findings contribute to establishing theoretical connections between varying motivations and the two types of trolling behaviors and serve as practical guidelines for developing tailored strategies to reduce and regulate online trolling.