
In the Summer of 2020, Habbo celebrated their 20th birthday with a two month long anniversary campaign and boosted user numbers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since August 2012, more than 273 million avatars have been registered with an average of 5 million unique visitors per month. Founded in 2000, Habbo has expanded to nine online communities (or "hotels"), with users from more than 150 countries. It is owned and operated by Sulake, a Finnish company. The results demonstrate that PANE moderates the influence of motivational factors on continued use intention and satisfaction.Habbo (formerly Habbo Hotel) is an online community aimed at teens and young adults. We test the model with data collected from 2134 Finnish Habbo Hotel users and employ structural equation modelling in the analysis. We extend the original information systems (IS) continuance model with perceived enjoyment and position PANE as a moderator. To this end, we introduce the concept of perceived aggregate network exposure (PANE). To fill in this gap, we examine how perceived network externalities affect the continuance of social virtual worlds. However, a small amount of research has examined the role of network externalities in continued IT usage in general or with respect to the virtual world participation in particular.

Prior research has shown that network externalities play a key role in the adoption of communication technologies. continuance, has become a top priority for virtual world operators. Due to intensifying competition, promoting sustained usage, i.e. At the same time, the number of virtual environments has increased rapidly. ► Attitude is a surprisingly weak predictor of teenagers’ usage of social virtual worlds.Įngagement in virtual worlds has become pervasive, particularly among the young. ► Purchasing virtual items results from sustained participation and perceived network externalities. ► Teenagers’ participation in social virtual worlds is strongly driven by their intrinsic motivation. Finally, perceived network externalities exert a significant influence of perceived enjoyment and usefulness of the SVW but do not have a direct effect on the continuous usage.► Millions of teenagers actively participate in social virtual worlds. Continuous SVW usage in turn is predicted directly by perceived enjoyment and usefulness while the effect of attitude is marginal.

Further, the results demonstrate the importance of the presence of other users in predicting the purchase behavior in the SVW. The results reveal a strong relationship between continuous usage and purchasing. This study builds upon Technology Acceptance Model, motivational model and theory of network externalities to examine continuous usage and purchase intention and it empirically tests the model with data collected from 2481 Habbo users. This requires an understanding of the underlying reasons why users continuously engage in SVWs and purchase virtual items.

For SVWs to be economically sustainable, retaining existing users and turning them into consumers are paramount challenges. At the same time, the supply and demand of virtual goods and services is rapidly increasing. Social virtual worlds (SVWs) have become important environments for social interaction. The results also reveal social hierarchies and discrimination among the users. From teenagers’ developmental standpoint, virtual purchasing facilitates identity experiments and membership of peer groups. The benefits of the premium user account, decoration, status, and boosted enjoyment of the user experience were the most common reasons for teenagers’ purchasing within an SVW. This study draws on Theory of Consumption Values and developmental psychology to elucidate the value teenage users create by spending money in a social virtual world (SVW) that employs the freemium business model in parallel with selling virtual items. Furthermore, young people constitute an important user segment for online social networking services that has not received proportionate attention in the literature.

However, the value users create by virtual purchasing is not well understood.
#Habboon hotel sign in free
offer a free access to the service and try to generate revenue from selling premium user accounts with exclusive features or selling virtual items. Many of these services employ the freemium business model i.e. Monetizing the users base is a major business challenge in social media, online social networking and online entertainment.
