TY - JOUR
T1 - A Dual-Identity Perspective of Obsessive Online Social Gaming
AU - Gong, Xiang
AU - Cheung, Christy M.K.
AU - Zhang, Kem Z.K.
AU - Chen, Chongyang
AU - Lee, Matthew K.O.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank the senior editor, Prof. Paul Benjamin Lowry and the two anonymous reviewers who contributed insightful and constructive suggestions to improve the paper. The work described in this paper was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 72001168, 72032006, and 71671174). Meanwhile, the work described in this paper was partially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. CityU 11508917).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, Association for Information Systems. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/9
Y1 - 2021/9
N2 - Obsessive online social gaming has become a worldwide societal challenge that deserves more scholarly investigation. However, this issue has not received much attention in the information systems (IS) research community. Guided by dual-system theory, we theoretically derive a typology of obsessive technology use and contextually adapt it to conceptualize obsessive online social gaming. We also build upon identity theory to develop a dual-identity perspective (i.e., IT identity and social identity) of obsessive online social gaming. We test our research model using a longitudinal survey of 627 online social game users. Our results demonstrate that the typology of obsessive technology use comprises four interrelated types: Impulsive use, compulsive use, excessive use, and addictive use. IT identity positively affects the four obsessive online social gaming archetypes and fully mediates the effect of social identity on obsessive online social gaming. The results also show that IT identity is predicted by embeddedness, self-efficacy, and instant gratification, whereas social identity is determined by group similarity, group familiarity, and intragroup communication. Our study contributes to the IS literature by proposing a typology of obsessive technology use, incorporating identity theory to provide a contextualized explanation of obsessive online social gaming and offering implications for addressing the societal challenge.
AB - Obsessive online social gaming has become a worldwide societal challenge that deserves more scholarly investigation. However, this issue has not received much attention in the information systems (IS) research community. Guided by dual-system theory, we theoretically derive a typology of obsessive technology use and contextually adapt it to conceptualize obsessive online social gaming. We also build upon identity theory to develop a dual-identity perspective (i.e., IT identity and social identity) of obsessive online social gaming. We test our research model using a longitudinal survey of 627 online social game users. Our results demonstrate that the typology of obsessive technology use comprises four interrelated types: Impulsive use, compulsive use, excessive use, and addictive use. IT identity positively affects the four obsessive online social gaming archetypes and fully mediates the effect of social identity on obsessive online social gaming. The results also show that IT identity is predicted by embeddedness, self-efficacy, and instant gratification, whereas social identity is determined by group similarity, group familiarity, and intragroup communication. Our study contributes to the IS literature by proposing a typology of obsessive technology use, incorporating identity theory to provide a contextualized explanation of obsessive online social gaming and offering implications for addressing the societal challenge.
KW - Contextualization
KW - Dual-System Theory
KW - Identity Theory
KW - IT Identity
KW - Longitudinal Study
KW - Obsessive Online Social Gaming
KW - Obsessive Technology Use
KW - Social Identity
KW - Typology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85115659632&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.17705/1jais.00693
DO - 10.17705/1jais.00693
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85115659632
SN - 1536-9323
VL - 22
SP - 1245
EP - 1284
JO - Journal of the Association for Information Systems
JF - Journal of the Association for Information Systems
IS - 5
ER -