Hedonic Information Systems: What We Know and What We Don't Know
Berger Benedikt, Hess Thomas
Abstract
Users spend an increasing amount of time with pleasure-oriented technologies, such as video games or digital entertainment services, and these systems are of growing relevance as a business segment. In the light of this development, the information systems (IS) discipline has been criticized for dedicating insufficient research effort to these types of system, which are referred to as hedonic IS. Therefore, we conducted a descriptive literature review within the top 40 IS journals to summarize past research on hedonic IS and to identify research gaps. To structure our analysis, we separated the studies in our sample between those taking a user and those taking a provider perspective, assigned them to the phases of two life cycle models, and categorized the studies according to the investigated system type. The results reveal that hedonic IS research mostly takes a user perspective, predominantly addresses the (continued) use phase of the user life cycle, and investigates five different system types. Based on our findings, we point out promising opportunities for future research. Thus, our review may help researchers to plan further studies on hedonic IS.
Keywords
hedonic IS; IS discipline; literature review; IS life cycle