Purpose
Prior studies on virtual product purchase have focused on external technological factor but have paid less attention to internal user factors. Thus, drawing upon the social presence and user engagement theories, the purpose of this paper is to develop a research model considering both technological factors and user factors and empirically examine the validity of the proposed research model.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey from 214 World of Warcraft players was conducted to test the proposed research model, and structural equation modelling approach (specifically, PLS) was used to test the proposed hypotheses.
Findings
The data analysis results suggest that both social presence and user engagement positively influence the intention to purchase virtual products. Furthermore, two technological factors, interactivity and sociability, are found to affect social presence, and two social factors, social ties and social identity, are found to affect user engagement.
Originality/value
This study proposes a dual factor framework (i.e. technological and user factors) to investigate the factors influencing the intention to purchase by integrating the social presence perspective and user engagement perspective. The findings would be beneficial for service provider of massively multiplayer online role-playing games to recognize that triggering user demand is of equal importance with offering better technologies and suggest new ways to promote users’ virtual product purchase intentions.
Although Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) attract millions of people to enroll in their courses, the completion rate for most courses is very low. A majority of MOOCs students are not fully engaged in MOOCs, thus leading them to quit in the early stage of the courses. Therefore, it is important to investigate students’ engagement in MOOCs. Drawing on self‐determination theory and the theory of relationship quality, this study proposes a model that conceptualizes the MOOCs engagement as consisting of psychological engagement and behavioral engagement and explores the antecedents of students’ engagement in MOOCs. The research model is tested using data collected from 374 students of Chinese University MOOC. The results show that fulfillment of three basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness have significant positive effects on intrinsic motivation, increasing students’ psychological engagement in MOOCs. Relationship quality significantly predicts students’ psychological engagement, and psychological engagement promotes behavioral engagement in MOOCs. Implications for research and practice as well as limitations of this study are discussed finally.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to explore how social media usage affects people’s life satisfaction through two competing explanatory mechanisms.
Design/methodology/approach
– An online survey was conducted to collect data. And the partial least squares method was used to examine the relationships among the usage of social media, social benefit, social overload and life satisfaction.
Findings
– The results indicate that usage of social media can make people achieve social benefit, thus leading to enhanced life satisfaction. Unexpectedly, though usage of social media can bring the negative consequences (e.g. social overload), social overload cannot predict a decreased life satisfaction.
Originality/value
– Concentrating on the outcomes of social aspects by using social media, this study proposes the double-sided role of social media instead of single effect.
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