Playing Ant Forest to promote online green behavior: A new perspective on uses and gratifications

The popularity of Internet technology has resulted in people's lives being increasingly embedded in this network. The rise in usage of environmental protection apps has become a powerful tool in driving offline environmental protection activities and green lifestyles. However, little is known about the public's online green behavior. To fill this gap, we took Ant Forest, the most influential online environmental protection project in China, as a case study to explore the driving psychology of Ant Forest users' continuous use behaviors (CUBs) by expanding the use and gratifications theory. The proposed hypotheses were tested using a structural equation model based on data from 951 Ant Forest users. The results showed that users' gratification is an important psychological motivation that encourages CUBs in Ant Forest, and the different dimensions of gratification have significant differences in the driving intensity of the three types of CUBs. Moreover, emotional dependence moderates the relationships between gratifications and CUBs. Finally, from the perspective of cultivating gratification, this study suggests promoting the continuous use of Ant Forest as it provides a reference for understanding and developing online green behavior.