Perceived integration as a gratification facilitator: psychological drivers of students’ continuance intention in blended learning
Abstract
What sustains students’ intention to continue using educational technology? In blended learning, prior research identifies satisfaction as a key predictor of continuance intention but often treats it as a single construct and pays limited attention to the environmental conditions that enable different forms of gratification. This study extends Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT) in two ways. First, it introduces perceived integration as an environmental antecedent of gratification. Perceived integration captures the coherence students perceive between online and offline learning components and is theorized as a gratification facilitator. Second, the study distinguishes content satisfaction, process satisfaction, and social satisfaction as separate forms of gratification and examines these gratification processes together with perceived overload informed by Cognitive Load Theory. We analyzed survey data from 327 Chinese university students using partial least squares structural equation modeling. Perceived integration strongly predicted all three forms of satisfaction, with β values ranging from 0.780 to 0.817. Content and process satisfaction significantly predicted continuance intention, with β values of 0.348 and 0.339, respectively, whereas social satisfaction did not. System functionality overload, information overload, and social overload did not significantly predict continuance intention. Together, these results show that gratification structures vary across technology contexts and differ from patterns reported in social media research. They also identify integration quality, rather than feature richness, as a key design priority for blended learning.