Predictors of Mobile News Consumption through News Applications (Apps): The Impacts of Audience Characteristics, Media Usage, and Motivations

This study investigates news audiences’ platform preferences, usage patterns, and factors affecting their mobile news consumption through news apps. Four explanatory factors, news app users’ demographics, news media usage, perceptions, and motivations, are proposed to predict adoption intention. By surveying 698 mobile news app users in the US, this study’s findings indicate that user perceptions of news apps (i.e., perceived ease of use, compatibility, relative content advantage, and observability) and instrumental motivations of news consumption (i.e., information-seeking and opinion needs) best predict news consumers’ willingness to continue using mobile news apps. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed to offer new insights into mobile news audience behavior and inform current digital publishers on cross-media strategies in the highly competitive mobile news market.