Why Do Some People Become Addicted to Digital Games More Easily? A Study of Digital Game Addiction from a Psychosocial Health Perspective

ABSTRACT

Exploring digital game addiction from a psychosocial perspective has gained much attention because digital game addiction is a serious social computing issue related to public health. A number of studies have empirically tested the effects of depression and loneliness on aggression, but few studies have explored the relationships among the psychosocial constructs (i.e., depression, loneliness, and aggression) and their effects on game addiction. In addition, the mediating role of aggression in digital game addiction has neither been proposed nor empirically tested. Moreover, although the psychological constructs related to game addiction have been proposed as multidimensional concepts and digital game addiction itself has been suggested as a multidimensional construct, few studies have been proposed and conducted using multidimensional constructs. This study sought to fill these gaps by proposing an integrated model of digital game addiction from a psychosocial health perspective. In particular, this study had three objectives: (1) to propose a second-order game addiction model addressing the relationships among loneliness, depression, aggression, and game addiction as multidimensional constructs and presenting aggression as a mediator between other psychosocial constructs and game addiction; (2) to empirically validate the proposed model using survey data obtained from actual online game users; and (3) to provide new insights for game policymakers in dealing with the digital game addiction issues. Based on the empirical findings, the theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed herein.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the faculty research fund of Konkuk University in 2014.

Notes

¹ We outsourced the survey project to the Hankook Research Co. (www.hrc.co.kr), which is one of top survey research companies in Korea. The survey was conducted with 20 interviewers in Seoul and its suburban areas (Gyeonggi province).

² SmartPLS is one of the software tools for partial least squares structural equation modeling. It has an easy to use and intuitive graphical user interface (check samrtpls.de for more details).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eui Jun Jeong

Eui Jun Jeong is an associate professor in the Department of Digital Culture & Contents at Konkuk University in Seoul, Korea. He received his PhD from Michigan State University. His research has focused on gaming effects in education, advertising, consumer behavior, and HCI. His articles have been published in refereed journals such as Journal of Advertising, Computers in Human Behavior, and CyberPsychology Behavior & Social Networking.

Dan J. Kim

Dan J. Kim is a professor of Information Technology and Decision Sciences at University of North Texas. His research interests are in multidisciplinary areas such as information security and privacy, information assurance, and trust in electronic commerce. His research has been published or is forthcoming in more than 120 articles in refereed journals, including ISR, JMIS, JAIS, CACM, DSS, and others.

Dong Min Lee

Dong Min Lee is an instructor in the Department of Motion Art Design at Namseoul University in South Korea. She received her PhD from Konkuk University. Her research interests are in video game activism, media aesthetics, and human–computer interaction.