Psychosocial Factors Affecting Intention To Play Esports

In recent years, the negative perspective about esports that used to dominate the opinion of many people as well as sports researchers has gradually been changing in the academic world. Previous studies have shown that psychosocial values of esports such as having fun, escaping from daily life, and social interaction. However, previous studies on motivations for esports gameplay were conducted from qualitative research perspectives, focusing on esports viewership, and there has comparatively been little esports gameplay research from a quantitative perspective. Against the qualitative research heavy background, the purpose of this research is to examine the psychosocial factors that influence the intention to play esports from a quantitative perspective. To test the hypothesis that psychosocial factors are positively related to the intention to play esports, an online survey was distributed to esports players who live in the United States via Amazon Mechanical Turk (M-Turk). Specifically, respondents were esports players who are in the age range of 20 to 69 years old, who live in the United States, and who have played at least one popular multiplayer esports game. Two hundred responses were collected for obtaining information from a knowledgeable and accessible source, and a convenient sampling approach was used in the selection of subjects. To assess the factor structure of the constructs including intention and psychosocial factors (enjoyment, escapism, social interaction), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was used. In addition, testing the relationship between each psychosocial factor of esports and the intention to play esports was conducted via Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)