Factors Influencing EFL College Students’ Continuance Intention in Online Learning: The Mediating Roles of Trust and Flow Experience

Abstract

With the growth of internet technologies, online learning has become central in education, yet challenges of low engagement and uneven outcomes remain. Guided by the DeLone and McLean information systems success model, flow theory, and trust theory, this study examined continuance intention among Chinese college students learning English as a foreign language. An integrated model including information quality, service quality, system quality, convenience, interactivity, personalization, trust, and flow experience was tested with data from 990 valid questionnaires using structural equation modeling. Results showed that interactivity was the strongest direct predictor of continuance intention, followed by information quality, convenience, service quality, and personalization, whereas system quality had no significant direct effect and operated entirely through flow experience and trust. Flow experience mediated five of the six antecedents, and trust mediated four; trust did not mediate convenience or personalization. The model explained 77.9% of the variance in continuance intention, indicating strong explanatory power. These findings highlight interactivity and information quality as primary levers, the supporting roles of service quality and convenience, the need to foster flow experience and trust, and the value of leveraging system quality through psychological mechanisms. Insights may inform similar higher-education contexts.

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