The impact of flow, satisfaction and reputation on loyalty to MOOCs: the moderating role of extrinsic motivation

Loyalty – users’ commitment to an institution or resource, involving its repeated use and recommending its use to others – and its explaining factors are of paramount importance in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), where participation is open and many actors with differing interests coexist. The present article tests a loyalty formation model by using satisfaction, flow state and reputation as explanatory factors. It also examines the role of extrinsic motivation (EM) as a potential moderator of inter-variable relationships. Data were gathered from questionnaires distributed to users of a MOOC offered by the University of Granada (Spain). Results indicate that EM plays an important moderating role in loyalty formation. Satisfaction, enjoyment and reputation are less important when EM is higher, whilst control appears to be more relevant to externally driven users. Practical implications include the recommendation to personalise users’ learning experience with different types of motivation in order to increase loyalty.