Abstract: This paper aims to uncover the influencing factors of social media users’ information avoidance behavior to provide convenience to scholars for future research, and it also provides theoretical guidance to relevant organizations for their practices of decreasing individuals’ information avoidance so as to improve the effectiveness of information communication. In order to find the main causes of social media users’ information avoidance behavior, the existing literature about ad avoidance, news avoidance, and other types of information avoidance were analyzed by using the systematical review approach. The results showed that social media users’ information avoidance was mainly impacted by the information-related factors (e.g., information quality, amount, and expression form), the user-related factors (e.g., cognition, affection, interests, attitudes, and behaviors), and situation factors (e.g., the characteristics of social media, and social influence of other users).

Key words: Social media, Information avoidance, Ad avoidance, News avoidance, Influencing factor, User behavior