An Empirical Study Of The Etwork Casual Games Usage Intention

The Chinese network games have been developing since 2001. With the popularization of internet infrastructure and the improvement of the people's living standard, the market size is growing bigger day by day. In addition, some organizations for market research have pointed out that the Chinese network games have a good future. Some graduate students have begun to study the network games, but few to the network casual games especially. This dissertation, therefore, studied the network casual games especially. Taking the current popular game of Happy Farm as an example, this dissertation studied the factors which influences the usage intention of network casual games by the empirical methodology and provides a theoretical help for the manufacturers, operators and advertisers.The studies of this dissertation include the following parts:firstly, to review the domestic studies on the marketing of the current network casual games and the relevant studies about the TAM theory, Network Externalities theory and Perceived Risk theory. And based on those theories, hypothesis to explain the usage intention of network casual games are developed. Secondly, to design an initial questionnaire through qualitative interviews and literature review, and the formal questionnaire was developed after pre-surveys had been done. Thirdly, to collect data, then advanced statistical programs are used for the sample descriptive statistical analysis of basic personal informal, and to test the questionnaire's reliability and validity by using the EFA analysis and CFA analysis. Fourthly, to test the hypothesis and the statistical program LISERL8.70 is used for the SEM analysis to come to a conclusion.The theoretical significance of the research includes expanding the TAM, Network Externalities and Perceived Risk into the area of studying network casual games, making the appropriate changes to some models in these theories. The practical significance of the research is to find out the key factors affecting usage intention of network casual games among customers, and to help the manufacturers, operators and advertisers clarify the focus of their work.The results show that Perceived Ease of Use has no significant direct impact on Usage Intention, that Perceived Playfulness is a major determinant of people's intentions to use network casual games, that Network Externality will impact to Perceived Playfulness significantly, and that players do not care the perceived risks (for them, only perceived time-risk have a little impact) whereas non-players do care the perceived risks (both Time Risk and Social Risk have a influence on Usage Intention).