The long-term development of a mobile gaming application (app) depends on its continued use by its users. The aim of this study is to investigate the determinants of a mobile gaming app’s continuance intention among users. The expectation-confirmation model of IS continuance was used as the basic framework, to which bi-dimensional consumption emotions were added to help better explain satisfaction judgment and continuance intention in the context of mobile gaming app use. To test the expanded IS continuance model, we conducted an online survey among mobile gaming app users; 271 valid responses were collected. The data were analyzed using structural equation models (SEM). The effects of positive emotions (PE) and negative emotions (NE) were examined, respectively, in model 1 and model 2. Competing models (models 3, 4 and 5) were also examined in order to compare the proposed models. Both positive and negative emotions have a significant effect on the satisfaction of mobile gaming app users and their continued usage intention, a finding that represents an important contribution to the extension of technology continuance theory. Comparison with the IS continuance model shows that the new model can explain significantly more variance in continuance intention. This study presents two extensions to the expectation-confirmation model of IS continuance. First, this paper presents and tests a theoretical model, derived from the IS continuance model, in which emotions play an important role in measuring customer satisfaction and subsequent long-term behavioral intention. The proposed model can be used to predict the satisfaction and continuance intention of situations in which a consumer’s emotional expectations and reactions are a core part of the consumption experience. Second, we ground the expectation-confirmation model of IS continuance in the context of mobile gaming apps, which involves both utilitarian (cognitive) and hedonic (affective) components. This study offers insight into the role of emotions in forming continuance intentions toward mobile gaming app use in China, a topic that has not previously been investigated. The findings have important implications for practice in the mobile gaming app sector. Special attention should be given to users’ consumption emotions, since emotions have been found to be strongly related to satisfaction and subsequent continued usage intention. For instance, mobile games firms should make efforts to develop strategies to enhance game players’ positive emotions (such as feeling joyful, interested, cheerful, excited, active, attentive) during the games because game players’ emotional fulfillment leads to satisfaction and minimizes negative emotions (such as feeling distressed, ashamed, afraid, nervous, upset or lonely); such negative emotions have been shown to have a direct and strong effect on satisfaction as well as an indirect effect continuance intention via satisfaction.

The 2013 Korean Gaming White Paper suggested that the mobile gaming market has a potential for the future value realization. The market of mobile games exploded by 89.1% compared to 2011 and the market share almost doubled. With higher infiltration and performance enhancement of the mobile devices, accompanied by the growth in the mobile advertisement market, fueled the development of the relevant infrastructure and the business model, which is the basis of our anticipation on the gaming industry to grow further. Unlike the weight it carries in our society, the literatures in the field of mobile games are scarce, which is why we conducted this study. In this study, we will focus on the characterizing factors of the mobile game and their relationship with immersion in order to identify with proofs the intent of their users for continued, repeated usage of the mobile games using statistical methods. The purpose of this study is to identify the characterizing factors of the mobile games that affect the intent for repeated usage and immersion, with a view to contribute to the development of the mobile games and the mobile gaming industry. The result of the evidentiary analysis revealed that the internal and external factors of the mobile games did have positive impacts on immersion into them, and the immersion into the game positively affected the intent for repeated usage. In addition, we examined the differences between genders in terms of the influence from the characterizing factors onto immersion, which revealed statistically significant differences between the genders and was reflected in our consideration on the implication of this study.