Alone or together? Exploring the role of desire for online group gaming in players’ social game addiction

Highlights

• This study highlights the role of desire for online group gaming on players' social game addiction.

• Attitute, perceived enjoyment, group norm, social identity positively influence desire for online group gaming.

• Desire for online group gaming positively influences habit and self-regulation deficiency and ultimately fosters online social game addiction.

• Habit positively moderate the role of self-regulation deficiency on online social game addiction.

Abstract

Drawing on dual-system theory, this study examines the role of desire for online group gaming in online social game addiction. By conducting a longitudinal online survey, we show that attitude, anticipated enjoyment, group norm, and social identity contribute to the development of desire for online group gaming. Such desire facilitates habit and self-regulation deficiency, which, in turn, fosters online social game addiction. This study contributes to the literature by theorizing a nomological network of desire for online group gaming on online social game addiction and by offering implications for managing addictive gaming.

Introduction

Online social games, which are facilitated by social networking sites such as WeChat, Twitter, and Facebook, have rapidly become prevalent digital pastimes for online players [1]. Online social games enable online social interaction among players through competitive, cooperative, and competitive-cooperative activities in social game communities [2]. For example, players can develop interpersonal relationships, exchange virtual gifts or coins, and play as a member of guild with their community friends [3,4]. Given their socialization features, online social games have gained burgeoning popularity. A serious social consequence of such popularity is online social game addiction [5]. Many reports have highlighted the increasing concerns over young players’ obsessive and addictive gaming. For example, Candy Crush, a Facebook-based and social puzzle game, has 93 million active users who play the game at an average of over 10 times per day [1]. Another famous online social game, Honor of Kings, has more than 200 million registered players, with every player spending an average of nearly 6 h per week playing the game [6]. Players’ addictive online gaming is often associated with various detrimental consequences, such as depression, stress, sleep disturbance, and even death [7,8]. As an increasingly prevalent societal challenge, online social game addiction warrants further research in terms of its antecedents and underlying mechanisms.

Technology addiction has received increasing attention in the information systems (IS) research community [[9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16],18,19]. Although previous research has identified a variety of antecedents of user technology addiction, the majority of these antecedents pertain to sociopsychological factors, such as demographics [1], addiction liability [18], perceived enjoyment [12,16], and habit [15,16,19]. The impact of social factors (e.g., socialization and group-referent behavior with other users) on technology addiction has been largely overlooked in the literature. One possible explanation is that most studies examined technology addiction in a context in which the behavior is individual-referent and does not usually involve other users (e.g., using smartphones, surfing the Internet, or watching online videos). A review of prior online game addiction literature also suggests that the concept of socialization is often neglected (see Appendix A). We found that only three online game addiction studies have mentioned the role of socialization in online game addiction [8,20,21]. Despite being an insightful start, prior studies did not examine the antecedents of socialization and their underlying mechanisms shaping online game addiction. There is a lack of systematic and theoretical understanding of the role of socialization in the formation of online game addiction.

Motivated by these issues in the technology addiction research, the primary research objective is to develop a systematic and contextualized understanding of online social game addiction. To achieve this objective, we draw on dual-system theory [22,23] to construct a research model that explains online social game addiction. By doing so, we advance the literature in two ways. First, we focus on socialization, which is particularly relevant in the online social game context. By incorporating socialization in the technology addiction models, we provide a contextualized theoretical explanation of online social game addiction, casting a new light on future investigations of technology addictions to social technologies. Second, we focus on dual-system theory to construct a nomological network explaining online social game addiction. Specifically, we emphasize the role of socialization (i.e., the desire for online group gaming) and examine its antecedents and consequences. This study enhances our theoretical understanding of the psychological mechanisms shaping online social game addiction. We believe that understanding online social game addiction is timely and of practical relevance. The results provide practitioners with insights into intervention and prevention of online social game addiction, which has severe impact to the new generation.