Abstract:

Mobile reading has been widely used by college students including those from China, Japan and Korea. Based on the Uses and Gratifications theory,this study tries to identify whether there are any significant differences of motivations and the evaluation of mobile reading among the college students from these three Asian countries.By statistical analysis of 1316 samples collected by questionnaire survey, we find that Entertainment Needs and Information-Acquiring Needs are the two most important motivations of college students’use of mobile reading, while the Chinese and the Korean care more about Entertainment Needs and the Japanese care more about Information-Acquiring Needs. And we also identify Interaction Needs is becoming an essential motivation of users’mobile reading,which Chinese and Korean value more than Japanese. In the aspects of user evaluation,we find that Chinese and Korean are more satisfied with the contents than digital platforms and systems,while Japanese are not so satisfied with the contents as digital platforms provided by mobile reading providers.