Consumer adoption of Mobile Social Network Games (M-SNGs) in Saudi Arabia: The role of social influence, hedonic motivation and trust

Mobile Social Network Games (M-SNGs) are highly upgraded technological applications which are used immensely within the electronic game sector. The proliferation of M-SNGs have triggered the necessity to understand factors that affect consumers' behavioural intention to use M-SNGs in order to gain a competitive advantage amongst companies in the market. However, there is no such literature that examines this topic in the Saudi Arabian context. Hence, the main purpose of this study is to identify the different factors which might impact on the intention to use M-SNGs amongst the Saudi potential users. As such, the influence of the independent factors of Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) has been highlighted (i.e. performance expectancy, effort expectancy, hedonic motivation, social influence, facilitating conditions and price value). Moreover, the importance of 'trust' factor in impacting the behavioural intention of the Saudi citizens has also been evaluated; furthermore, the impact of social influence and hedonic motivation over trust has been discussed. Regarding methodology, data has been collected through a field survey questionnaire and a total of 386 participants responded through the convenient sampling technique. The findings indicated that all the proposed hypotheses were accepted with the greatest impact of social influence over trust (0.41) followed by the impact of performance expectancy over behavioural intention (0.29).