What drives language learners’ to keep using Duolingo? How do perceived learning value and perceived enjoyment influence learners’ continuance intention to use Duolingo through satisfaction and habit, and how does relative challenge moderate these relationships?

Sammanfattning

This study investigates continuance intention to use Duolingo from a post-adoption perspective, drawing primarily on the Expectation-Confirmation Model (Bhattacherjee, 2001). In gamified mobile language learning, value is not achieved through initial adoption alone, but through repeated use that supports meaningful learning progress. Therefore, this study examines why active users intend to continue using Duolingo after prior app experience. The study argues that perceived learning value and perceived enjoyment operate as a utilitarian–hedonic hybrid in gamified learning environments. These two app perceptions are proposed to influence continuance intention through two parallel mechanisms: satisfaction, which represents the evaluative pathway, and habit, which represents the behavioural pathway. Relative challenge, informed by flow theory, is included as a moderator to examine whether perceived learning difficulty changes these relationships. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted among active Duolingo users. After data screening, 186 valid responses were analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) in SmartPLS. The findings show that satisfaction is the strongest mechanism explaining continuance intention, highlighting the importance of users’ positive evaluation of the app rather than repeated use alone. Relative challenge operates selectively by strengthening the relationship between perceived enjoyment and satisfaction, as well as the indirect pathway from perceived enjoyment to continuance intention through satisfaction. The robustness check shows that streak significantly predicts continuance intention. However, unlike habit, streak is not significantly driven by perceived learning value, suggesting that psychological habit and visible behavioural records represent different forms of repeated use. The study contributes to continuance research by extending the utilitarian–hedonic hybrid perspective to gamified mobile language learning. Practically, the findings suggest that gamified learning platforms should not focus only on making users return, but on making repeated use feel enjoyable, educationally meaningful, and connected to visible learning progress.