How gamification and social interaction stimulate MOOCs continuance intention via cognitive presence, teaching presence and social presence?

Purpose This study's purpose is to propose a research model based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model to examine whether gamification and social interaction as environmental stimulus antecedents to learners' perceptions of presence can affect their continuance intention of massive open online courses (MOOCs). Design/methodology/approach Sample data for this study were collected from learners who had experience in taking gamified MOOCs provided by the MOOC platform launched by a well-known university in Taiwan, and 353 usable questionnaires were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). Findings This study demonstrated that learners' perceived gamification, learner–instructor interaction and learner–learner interaction in MOOCs positively affected their cognitive presence, teaching presence and social presence elicited by MOOCs, which jointly expounded their continuance intention of MOOCs. The results support all proposed hypotheses, and the research model accounts for 72.6% of the variance in learners' MOOCs continuance intention. Originality/value This study employs the S-O-R model as a theoretical umbrella to frame learners' MOOCs continuance intention as a series of the internal process, which is influenced by gamification and social interaction. Noteworthily, three psychological constructs of the community of inquiry model (i.e. cognitive presence, teaching presence and social presence) are adopted to represent learners' internal experiences of MOOCs usage. To date, hedonic/utilitarian concepts are more commonly adopted as organisms in prior studies based on the S-O-R model, whereas psychological constructs have received lesser attention. Hence, this study enriches the S-O-R model into an invaluable context.