Examining situational continuous mobile game play behavior from the perspectives of diversion and flow experience

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate users’ continuous adoption behaviors on mobile game playing from the perspective of situational habit formation. Design/methodology/approach Based on the literature research, a continuous adoption model for situational mobile game is proposed. And the research model is assessed based on data gathered from a sample of 226 mobile game players by employing the structural equation model methodology. Findings The results show that situational cues represented by availability, perceived ease of use and diversion lead to repeated performance that can be represented by flow experience and satisfaction in the situational mobile game playing context. But only flow experience and diversion influence continuous usage directly. Additionally diversion, as a critical situational variable, not only indirectly affects continuous usage intention through flow experience, but also directly affects continuous usage intention for situational mobile game playing. Originality/value Mobile game adoption has been studied from different perspectives, but most research is based on the technology acceptance model. They could not explain the common fact that young people tend to be highly motivated by mobile games and can be regarded as pro-active mobile game players, but many people play mobile games only when they are bored and need a diversion. So this study attempts to illustrate the phenomena to fill the gaps.