Clicking, Assessing, Immersing, and Sharing: An Empirical Model of User Engagement with Interactive Media

This article explicates the concept of user engagement by synthesizing a disparate body of scholarship, and suggests a measurement and a structural model for empirically capturing the meaning and process of user engagement, specifically in the context of interactive media. A second-order confirmatory factor analysis of data from two experiments (N = 263) shows that four attributes—physical interaction, interface assessment, absorption, and digital outreach—together constitute a valid and reliable operationalization of the concept of user engagement. A structural equation model reveals that greater amount of physical interaction with the interface and a more positive assessment of the interface predict cognitive absorption with the content, which in turn is associated with greater behavioral intention to manage and socially distribute the content. In addition, predictive validity tests show that the four subscales are predictors of attitudinal and learning outcomes.