Do gaming motives mediate between psychiatric symptoms and problematic online gaming? A cross-cultural study
Abstract
Previous studies have found associations between specific gaming motives (escapism, achievement, social) and problematic video gaming. Furthermore, it has also been reported that escape, competition, and fantasy motives mediated between psychiatric distress and problematic online gaming (POG).
The present study tested the mediating role of online gaming motives between psychiatric symptoms and POG across ten language-based samples. Methods: Data from 11,465 participants were collected among Hungarian (n = 4,288), Korean (n = 3,040), Peruvian (n = 804), English-speaking (n = 680), Iranian (n = 655), Norwegian (n = 614), Czech (n = 437), French-speaking (n = 366), Slovenian (n = 301) and Italian (n = 280) online gamers via gaming-related websites and social networking site groups.
Results: Psychiatric symptoms had a significant positive direct effect on POG (β varying between .229 and .394 across the samples) and also a significant indirect (mediating) effect (β varying between .100 and .311) via specific motives. Escape was the strongest mediator in the large majority of the samples except for two (Iranian and Peruvian) where fantasy was the strongest mediator.
Competition, coping, and social motives were also mediators in some of the samples but with negligible effect sizes. Conclusions: Results suggest that among online gaming motives, escape is the one that most consistently mediates between psychiatric symptoms and POG across cultures.