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Demystifying continuous participation in game applications at social networking sites: A social playfulness design perspective

Yi Wu (Department of Information Management and Management Science, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China)
Tingru Cui (University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia)
Na Liu (School of Information Technologies, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia)
Yimeng Deng (Huawei Nanjing Research Institute, Nanjing, China)
Junpeng Guo (Tianjin University, Tianjin, China)

Internet Research

ISSN: 1066-2243

Article publication date: 4 April 2018

803

Abstract

Purpose

Drawn from the social playfulness literature and the elaboration likelihood model, the purpose of this paper is to propose and test a research model to examine users’ continuous participation in SNS game applications.

Design/methodology/approach

A field survey with 133 subjects was conducted to test the research model.

Findings

Two identified design features, symbolic physicality and inherent sociability, are found to influence users’ perceived curiosity and perceived enjoyment toward playing SNS game applications. Perceived enjoyment is significantly associated with perceived curiosity and predicts users’ continuous participation of SNS game applications. The authors also observed a gender difference of social playfulness design on perceived curiosity.

Research limitations/implications

Use intention was used as a proxy for actual use behavior, since objective data on continuance behavior was not available. Additionally, the contributions of this study may be constrained by one single sample.

Practical implications

The findings of the study suggest practical guidelines for designing game applications in SNS through socialization design and symbolic physicality. Further, based on the findings of gender differences, a personalization game design strategy is provided.

Originality/value

The study contributes to the post-adoption IS literature and sheds light on the interesting area of social media participation. Additionally, this study enriches the online gaming research by demonstrating gender differences.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the reviewer team for their constructive comments. This study was supported by he Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science Fund (Grant No. 17YJC630173) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71671121).

Citation

Wu, Y., Cui, T., Liu, N., Deng, Y. and Guo, J. (2018), "Demystifying continuous participation in game applications at social networking sites: A social playfulness design perspective", Internet Research, Vol. 28 No. 2, pp. 374-392. https://doi.org/10.1108/IntR-11-2016-0347

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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