Role of Personalization in Continuous Use Intention of Mobile News Apps in India: Extending the UTAUT2 Model

The aim of this study was to empirically examine the extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2) model by adding “personalization” as one of the antecedents, as well as a moderator to determine the key factors for the continuous use intention of mobile news applications (apps). For this study, an online and manual sample survey of 309 respondents, who had used the news app earlier, was collected and analyzed, using quantitative methods such as explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and Hayes process for finding moderating effects among variables. The findings of the direct effect demonstrated that performance expectancy (PE) has the most influential effect on continuous use intention, followed by habit (HT), hedonic motivation (HM), and facilitating conditions (FC). Furthermore, the outcome of tests for the moderating effect of personalization between UTAUT2 constructs and continuous use intention (CUI) showed that personalization has a significant moderating effect on performance expectancy and habit. Therefore, this research establishes the key role of PE, HT, HM, and FC as main factors that trigger the users’ continuous use intention of news apps and provides an integrated framework to assess the moderating effect of personalization on technology acceptance. The findings of the research expand the existing literature on news applications and provide foundation for future research studies in the area of mobile news apps.