Pressing the Play Button: What Drives the Intention to Play Social Mobile Games?

Due to the penetration of the Internet, social mobile games have become one of the most popular entertaining virtual activities and hence, created a new market for online social networking. In this project, the authors examine the factors that drive consumers’ intentions to play social mobile games and spread positive wordof-mouth about the games. Expanding the Uses and Gratifications Theory, a research model is developed to test six factors, including perceived entertainment, social interaction, pass time, game popularity, usability, and trust. The research model was tested with 387 responses from online participants using SmartPLS. The results revealed that four factors perceived entertainment, game popularity, usability and trust significantly influenced both intentions to play social mobile games and spread positive word-of-mouth. Social interaction was found to influence intention to spread word-of-mouth only. Practical implications and theoretical contributions of the study findings are discussed in the context of social mobile networking. Pressing the Play Button: What Drives the Intention to Play Social Mobile Games?