2013/11/01 by Paul Benjamin Lowry, James Gaskin, Nathan W. Twyman +2 · 438 citations
Decision Sciences · Social Sciences · Psychology · #Technology Adoption and User Behaviour #Digital Marketing and Social Media #Behavioral Health and Interventions #Technology acceptance model #Context (archaeology) #Usability #Perspective (graphical) #Psychology #Revenue #Knowledge management #Computer science #Marketing #Business #Human–computer interaction
paper · doi:10.17705/1jais.00347
published in Journal of the Association for Information Systems 14(11), 617-671 (Association for Information Systems)
openalex publication_date 2013/11/01 · openalex created_date 2021/02/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Hedonic-motivation systems (HMS)—systems used primarily to fulfill users’ intrinsic motivations—are the elephant in the room for IS research. Growth in HMS sales has outperformed utilitarian-motivation systems (UMS) sales for more than a decade, generating billions in revenue annually; yet IS research focuses mostly on UMS. In this study, we explain the role of intrinsic motivations in systems use and propose the hedonic-motivation system adoption model (HMSAM) to improve the understanding of HMS adoption. Instead of a minor, general TAM extension, HMSAM is an HMS-specific system acceptance model based on an alternative theoretical perspective, which is in turn grounded in flow-based cognitive absorption (CA). The HMSAM extends van der Heijden’s (2004) model of hedonic system adoption by including CA as a key mediator of perceived ease of use (PEOU) and of behavioral intentions to use (BIU) hedonic-motivation systems. Results from experiments involving 665 participants confirm that, in a hedonic context, CA is a more powerful and appropriate predictor of BIU than PEOU or joy, and that the effect of PEOU on BIU is fully mediated by CA sub-constructs. This study lays a foundation, provides guidance, and opens up avenues for future HMS, UMS, and mixed-motivation system research.