The Prospective Effect of Protective Gaming Beliefs and Behaviors on Problematic Gaming, Mental Health, and Well-Being of Video Game Players

Abstract

While most players enjoy video gaming, a minority suffer from problematic gaming. Existing studies focused on risk factors and proposed legislative and technological measures to contain the undesirable consequences. The present study aims to examine whether players’ healthy gaming practices can protect themselves against problematic gaming. We conducted a longitudinal survey at a public university in China, 604 college students took the first wave survey, and 365 of them completed the second wave six months later. The results showed that protective gaming beliefs and behaviors at baseline were negatively associated with problematic gaming tendency, and positively associated with mental health and well-being at follow-up. Problematic gaming tendency did not predict mental health and well-being. The findings suggested that players’ self-regulation can be an effective measure against problematic gaming and promote mental health and well-being. The present study can inspire stakeholders to develop additional approaches to help at-risk and problematic players.

Keywords:

• Video game
• problematic gaming
• self-protection
• mental health
• well-being

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Ethics approval was obtained from the ethics committee of the Department of Psychology, University of Macau (Approval Code: 2021-07). Informed consent was obtained from all participants involved in the study.

Author contributions

Mu He: Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing-original draft; Yantao Ren: Investigation, Writing-review & editing; Yu Liu: Investigation, Writing-review & editing; Kwok Kit Tong: Conceptualization, Writing-review & editing, Supervision. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of the present study are available in [Open Science Framework] at http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/34NKZ.

Research materials availability statement

The authors declared no restrictions on research materials availability.

Notes

1 We also performed another version of analysis that included three outcome variables in one model and evaluated the effects of T1 protective gaming beliefs and behaviors on T2 outcome variables simultaneously. The result showed that the model fit was slightly worse than the separate models but still adequate. Comparing with the separate models, the combined model had similar path weights from protective gaming beliefs and behaviors to outcome variables. Since the results from two modeling approaches were similar, we hope that separately presenting the outcome variables may help readers to better follow the connections between predictors and outcomes.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Mu He

Mu He is now a PhD candidate at the University of Macau. His research interest is to promote health behaviors from social cognitive perspectives. His current research focuses on investigating positive and protective factors of video gaming and gambling.

Yantao Ren

Yantao Ren received his master’s degree from Department of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University. He is now an Associate Professor at the Criminal Investigation Police University of China. His research interests include criminal psychology and technology of lie detection.

Yu Liu

Yu Liu received his master’s degree in education from Shenyang Sport University in 2015. His current research primarily focuses on physical education and training, school physical education theory, as well as mental health education.

Kwok Kit Tong

Kwok Kit Tong is an Associate Professor at the University of Macau. His main research interest is exploring effective ways to promote psychological well-being and foster positive behaviors from a social psychological perspective. His current research focuses on gaming and gambling behaviors and protective factors.