Closing the Gap or Widening the Chasm: Impact of Mobile Channel Adoption in Goal-directed Platforms

Abstract

With the increasing trend of extending real-world activities into the virtual, goal-directed platforms have experienced rising popularity as they provide individuals with enhanced capabilities for goal pursuit. Prior literature has demonstrated the importance of diverse approaches to individuals’ goal pursuit activities. However, few studies have investigated how technology-mediated goal pursuits affect individuals’ behaviors. In this research, we perform a series of empirical analyses to examine the impacts of multi-channel adoption on goal pursuit activity and persistence. Our results indicate that mobile adoption improves overall goal pursuit effort by 140.1%. A positive effect on goal pursuit persistence is also observed. Most notably, the enlarging gap between different types of students has been found when a new technological channel is introduced. Particularly, users with high-level goal specificity and high learning competency achieve more considerable improvement from adopting mobile channel.