Effect of Perceived Fear, Quality, and Self-Determination on Learners’ Retention Intention on MOOCs

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to understand how perceived fear, course quality, and self-determination of learners influence the retention rate of massive open online courses (MOOCs) during the time of pandemic. METHODOLOGY: The proposed developed model is comprised of IS success, expectation confirmation and self-determination theories. Data were collected from 284 respondents and the structural equation modeling was applied to interpret and analyze the data. Additionally, importance-performance maps were plotted to prioritize essential findings. FINDINGS: The findings revealed that course quality, identified and integrated regulation (motivation) all significantly affect perceived usefulness and satisfaction to influence learners’ retention intention. Moreover, the importance performance map analysis (IPMA) exhibited that integrated regulations and course quality are very significant factors with very limited focus. Therefore, developers should improve the performance of these two factors to overcome the dropout rate. ORIGINALITY: This research analyzed the effect of the course quality, learners’ determination and fear of the pandemic as the determining factors. Besides, the impacts of motivational factors (integrated, identified, introjected and external) from determination theory were also investigated on the learner’s satisfaction. Finally, these factors were tested in the context pandemic that gave us new insights, which are not similar to pre-pandemic phase; ie, learners prefer course quality rather than system quality, because they demand new skill and knowledge to increase competitive advantage.