Information processing onmobile apps: A multilevel analysis of personality and behavioral traits that predictthe credibility of smartphone content

Smartphone users are growingly relying on mobile apps for accessing the news and other information as the content helps interpret the outside world and respond to it adaptively. Going beyond identifying external cues concerning information credibility, this study proposes a multilevel model for investigating how internal cues like personality and behavioral traits may predict smartphone information credibility, which is obtained through mobile apps. The model treats the need for cognition –an indicator of deep thinking –as the independent variable and smartphone information credibility as the dependent variable, with smartphone power use and information verification as the mediators, while controlling for such demographic characteristics as age, gender, education, and residence location. The results discover a significant indirect path from the need for cognition to smartphone power use and smartphone information credibility. Age, gender, and education were found to be significantly correlated with the credibility of smartphone information. The findings shed light on how people process informationonsmartphones, which can be influenced bythe use ofmobile apps.