Channel Expansion Theory: A Comprehensive Meta-analysis, Literature Review, and Examination of Boundary Conditions

Channel Expansion Theory (CET) has served as a foundational framework for understanding communication media selection and use since its introduction in the mid-1990s. While CET posits that individuals’ experiences with channel, partner, topic, and organizational context can expand perceptions of media richness, even for nominally “lean” media, empirical results have often been mixed across settings and constructs. This study presents a comprehensive literature review and meta-analysis of 31 quantitative studies applying CET across organizational and broader social contexts. The findings reveal when and how different forms of knowledge-building experience influence perceived media richness, media attitudes, and use behaviors, and discover important moderating effects of media synchronicity, communication setting, and power distance. This study advances our understanding of CET, resolves prior empirical inconsistencies, and provides directions for future research on technology-mediated communication and practical implications for media selection and media platform design.