"Chill with Friends" - Continuous engagement in social virtual worlds among digital natives

IS research on social virtual worlds (SVWs) has been contextually biased towards Second Life (SL). While young people constitute the largest SVW user group they do not normally use SL. We investigate the reasons for teenagers’ continuous engagement in Habbo Hotel with a multi-method approach. Grounded in the Uses & Gratifications approach and IT adoption literature, we develop a model examining the role of utilitarian, hedonic and social outcomes as well as normative influence in explaining continuous usage intention. The model is empirically tested with data collected from 1,770 Habbo users and analyzed using structural equation modeling. We triangulate our findings with a structured content analysis of user comments. The results demonstrate that perceived network effects exert the strongest influence on continuous use intention, followed by media and commercials. The qualitative analysis shows that the value of Habbo is essentially derived from the presence of other users and in-world experiences.