Comparative Study of Heavy and Light Users of Popular Smart Apps

This study theorizes and empirically analyzes the difference between heavy and light users in terms of anteceding mechanisms impacting their intention to use three different but most popular smartphone apps: SNS, game and music. Traditional technology acceptance model is adapted for this study by adding perceived enjoyment as a critical mediator. The research model is empirically tested against data collected via a survey. A survey instrument was developed from previous literature. Comparative partial least square analyses revealed large differences across different applications as well as across different groups of heavy and light users of these apps. Interestingly, it seems that the effect of social norm attenuates in heavy user group compared to light users. Also, the path along perceived usefulness seems to be much weaker in heavy users, compared to the path along the perceived enjoyment. Implications and further studies are discussed following detail analyses.