Understanding Continuance Intention to Play Online Games: The Roles of Hedonic Value, Utilitarian Value and Perceived Risk

The current study examines how the perception of negative consequences or risks interacts with hedonic and utilitarian values in predicting gamers’ continuance intention to play online games. We examine the proposed model by conducting an empirical study of the responses of two hundred and one (201) online gamers using structural equation modeling. From our results, hedonic value positively impacts the continuance intention to play online games, whereas utilitarian value does not significantly impact online gaming behavior. Furthermore, at higher perceived risk levels, hedonic value enhances the online game continuance intention whereas utilitarian value has insignificant effect. At low perceived risk levels, both hedonic and utilitarian values have significant effect on continuance intentions to play online games. The study discusses the theoretical contributions as well as practical implications of our findings.