| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation investigates key issues related to online gaming communities. Across three essays, the author explores the effects of three factors―(1) social connection, (2) demarketing, and (3) game design―on game users’ behaviors. The findings from the studies provide implications for theory, along with practical implications for game developers and policy makers.
In the first essay, the author examines the effect of social interactions on gamers’ in-game purchases of two different types of products, functional and social utility products. The author uses a unique and large scale dataset from an online game―that consists of users’ detailed gaming activities, their social connections and their in-game purchases of functional and social utility products―to examine the impact of gamers’ networks on their purchase behavior. The current analysis reveals evidence of “social dollars,” whereby social interaction between gamers in the community increases purchase of both functional and social utility products.
In the second essay, the author examines the effects on user behavior of two demarketing policy changes with regard to online and mobile games in South Korea: (1) lowering the maximum limit on online item purchases, and (2) restrictively allowing the use of real money to purchase items in mobile gaming apps. The author finds that lowering the maximum limit on online item purchases decreases the number of online gamers, and that allowing item purchases with real money in mobile games increases the number of mobile game players. The author finds that there are positive cross-channel spillover effects.
In the third essay, the author examines the goal gradient effects on behaviors related to attaining the goal (i.e., a game level) and purchasing virtual products in an online game. The author
provides empirical evidence that achieving game levels serve as goals. The author finds that users’ efforts related to reaching a new level increases as they become closer to the new level. However, their efforts suddenly decrease right after attaining it. The author finds that while users are less likely to purchase both goal-relevant and goal-irreverent virtual items right before achieving the new level, they purchase more virtual items once they reach the goal. | en |
