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Online game addiction among adolescents: motivation and prevention factors

  • Research Article
  • Published:
European Journal of Information Systems

Abstract

Online game addiction has become a common phenomenon that affects many individuals and societies. In this study we rely on the functionalist perspective of human behavior and propose and test a balanced model of the antecedents of online game addiction among adolescents, which simultaneously focuses on motivating, and prevention and harm reduction forces. First, a sample of 163 adolescents was used for validating and refining a survey instrument. Second, survey data collected from 623 adolescents were analyzed with Partial Least Squares techniques. The findings point to several functional needs (e.g., need for relationship and need for escapism) that drive online game playing and addiction, as well as to several prevention and harm reduction factors (e.g., education, attention switching activities) that reduce game playing time and alleviate online game addiction. The effects of motivation and prevention factors on online game addiction are often partially mediated by online game playing. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

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Notes

  1. The Chinese version of the survey is available upon request by contacting the first author.

  2. In China, middle school is 6 years long, from ages 12 to 18. The middle school is also divided into 3-year junior level and 3-year senior level.

  3. We first included gender and grade as control variables in our model. The results show that they have no significant impact on the endogenous constructs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Zhengchuan Xu

  2. College of Business and Economics, California State University, Fullerton, CA, U.S.A.

    Ofir Turel

  3. DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

    Yufei Yuan

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  1. Zhengchuan Xu
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  2. Ofir Turel
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  3. Yufei Yuan
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Correspondence to Zhengchuan Xu.

Appendices

Appendix A

Table A1

Table A1 Measurement instrument
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Appendix B

Table B1

Table B1 Descriptive statistics, construct reliabilities, AVE, and correlations
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Appendix C

Table C1

Table C1 Item loadings and cross-loadings
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Xu, Z., Turel, O. & Yuan, Y. Online game addiction among adolescents: motivation and prevention factors. Eur J Inf Syst 21, 321–340 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/ejis.2011.56

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