User acceptance of Second Life: an extended TAM including hedonic consumption behaviours

Second Life is a 3-D multi-user virtual environment which has gained wide spread popularity amongst academic community in the recent years. However, due to its infancy very little is known about the factors driving users’ intention to use Second Life especially in the educational context. This paper presents findings from an ongoing study about the impacts of using multi-user virtual environments in higher education. In information systems research, several models and frameworks have attempted to predict the acceptance of new technology. However some recent studies suggest that the traditional technology acceptance approaches may not work well with today’s entertainment-oriented technologies such as multi-user virtual environments. They also recommend exploring those facets of human behaviour that are likely to capture the hedonic consumption of such technologies. In this paper, we propose an extended technology acceptance model (TAM) including hedonic consumption behaviours in order to explain the usage and acceptance of Second Life in the educational context. The proposed model is empirically evaluated using survey data collected from 122 users about their perceptions of Second Life. Findings suggest that hedonic consumption behaviours are strong predictors of Second Life usage as compared to traditional motivational constructs of usefulness and ease-of-use