The Effect of Community Artifacts and Media Richness Elements on the Experiences of the Social Network Game Users : 'Anypang' Case

The deployment of social network service(SNS) makes the social network game(SNG) as the new value added service of SNS be popular. But, a few study had identified the reason of this popularity and the elements of SNG. Based on the social presence theory and media richness theory, we had tried to identify three community artifacts (i.e. persistent labeling, self presentation and deep profiling) and two media characteristics(i.e. vividness and interactivity) as the SNG elements in this research. Then we had empirically validated the effect of these elements on the SNGexperience (i.e. social presence, perceived enjoyment) and behavioral intentions (i.e. Continuous usage intention, willingness to pay and loyalty) of the users. We conducted a survey to the actual SNG users. 243 data were collected and analyzed by PLS algorism. The results indicated that the community artifacts mediated by the social presence and media characteristics could significantly affect on the experiences and behavioral intentions. These findings could contribute to identify what element could be the reason of social network game popularity and could also contribute to design more attractive social network game in practice.