An investigation into the virtual self, purchase behaviour and simulated gambling in video games

Abstract

Simulated gambling has been observed in over 100 video games as early as in 2012 (King, Delfabbro, Derevensky & Griffiths, 2012), however, the implications of participating in this activity are poorly understood. In the first part of this study, 10 participants were interviewed to investigate the influence of the virtual self in video games on spending habits and risk-taking behaviour in-game. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis. No influence of the virtual self on spending behaviour or interaction with simulated gambling was found. In the second part of this study, 52 participants (25 non-gamers, 27 gamers) were invited to complete an online card gambling task and a personality questionnaire that measured risk-taking behaviour. It was hypothesised that regular gamers would turn over more cards and therefore take more risks than non-gamers. This hypothesis was not supported, non-gamers turned over significantly more cards than gamers. Implications for future research are discussed.

Date of Award	Feb 2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Abertay University
Supervisor	Kenneth Scott-Brown (Supervisor) & George Lovell (Supervisor)