Role of Stressful Life Events, Avoidant Coping Styles, and Neuroticism in Online Game Addiction among College Students: A Moderated Mediation Model

Abstract

Online game addiction (OGA) is becoming a significant problem worldwide. The aim of this study was to explore the incidence of OGA and the roles of stressful life events, avoidant coping styles (ACSs), and neuroticism in OGA. A total of 651 Chinese college students were selected by random cluster sampling. Subjects completed the Chinese version of Young’s eight-item Internet Addiction Scale (CIAS), Online Game Cognition Addiction Scale (OGCAS), Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Short Scale in Chinese (EPQ-RSC), Chinese College-student Stress Questionnaire, and Coping Style Questionnaire. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to explore the interactive effects of stressful life events, ACSs, and neuroticism on OGA. Of the 651 participants in the sample, 31 (4.8%) were identified as addicts. The incidence of OGA was two times higher for males than females. The addicts had markedly higher scores on the neuroticism subscale of the EPQ-RSC than non-addicts. Compared to non-addicts, addicts were more apt to use ACSs. Having an avoidant coping strategy mediated the effect of stressful life events on OGA. Furthermore, neuroticism moderated the indirect effect of stressful life events on OGA via ACSs. Applications of these findings to etiological research and clinical treatment programs are discussed.

Attachment and behavioral addictions in adolescents: The mediating and moderating role of coping strategies

“…This could be indicating that problematic Internet use might be compensating for psychosocial disorders caused by avoidant coping styles and lack of flexibility to cope with stressors (Cheng, Sun & Mak, ; Li et al ., ). Similar results have been found with respect to adolescent Internet gaming addiction (Gupta et al ., ; Li, Zou, Wang & Yang, ). Regarding self‐blame, it is a maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategy that leads to increased levels of anxiety and depression, and has been found to be associated with adolescent behavioral addictions (Froushani & Akrami, ).…”

Internet Gaming Disorder and Its Associated Personality Traits: A Systematic Review Using PRISMA Guidelines

“…With regard to key methodological features of studies, all studies reviewed were empirical and quantitative nature. The majority of the studies employed a cross-sectional design (Braun et al 2016;Charlton and Danforth 2010;Chiu et al 2004;Collins et al 2012;Gonzalez-Bueso et al 2018;Kim et al 2008;Kim et al 2016;Lee et al 2017;Lehenbauer-Baum and Fohringer 2015;Mehroof and Griffiths 2010;Müller et al 2014;Schimmenti et al 2017;Torres-Rodríguez et al 2018;Walther et al 2012;Wang et al 2015;Wittek et al 2016), and five studies adopted a mixed-methods design (Borzikowsky and Bernhardt 2018;Hu et al 2017;Kırcaburun et al 2018;Laier et al 2018;Li et al 2016). Excluding three studies that combined both self-report questionnaires and clinical interviews (Gonzalez-Bueso et al 2018;Müller et al 2014;Torres-Rodríguez et al 2018), the remaining 18 studies used self-report questionnaires to collect data.…”

“…Regarding the geographic characteristics of the included studies, five studies were from Germany (Borzikowsky and Bernhardt 2018;Braun et al 2016;Laier et al 2018;Müller et al 2014;Walther et al 2012), three were from South Korea (Kim et al 2008;Kim et al 2016;Lee et al 2017), two from Spain (Gonzalez-Bueso et al 2018;Torres-Rodríguez et al 2018), two from China (Hu et al 2017;Li et al 2016), two from the UK (Collins et al 2012;Mehroof and Griffiths 2010), one from Turkey (Kırcaburun et al 2018), one from Belgium (Schimmenti et al 2017), one from Norway (Wittek et al 2016), one from Hong Kong (Wang et al 2015), and one from Taiwan (Chiu et al 2004). Additionally, there were two crosscultural studies; the first one collected data from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (Lehenbauer-Baum and Fohringer 2015), the second collected data from USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and European Countries (Charlton and Danforth 2010).…”

“…The vast majority of the included studies recruited more male participants (n = 11,204; 67.76%) than female participants (n = 5331; 32.24%). All the studies included adult samples apart from seven studies that included adolescent samples (Gonzalez-Bueso et al 2018;Hu et al 2017;Kim et al 2016;Li et al 2016;Torres-Rodríguez et al 2018;Walther et al 2012;Wang et al 2015). Seven studies comprised student samples (Chiu et al 2004;Hu et al 2017;Kim et al 2016;Li et al 2016;Mehroof and Griffiths 2010;Walther et al 2012;Wang et al 2015); four studies included outpatients (Gonzalez-Bueso et al 2018;Lee et al 2017;Müller et al 2014;Torres-Rodríguez et al 2018); nine studies included gamers (Borzikowsky and Bernhardt 2018;Charlton and Danforth 2010;Hu et al 2017;Kırcaburun et al 2018;Kim et al 2008;Laier et al 2018;Lehenbauer-Baum and Fohringer 2015;Schimmenti et al 2017;Wittek et al 2016); and with the exception of three studies (Hu et al 2017;Laier et al 2018;Wittek et al 2016), all studies that included gamers comprised Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) gamers.…”

“…A number of studies examined the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and IGD, but the findings were somewhat conflicting. While some studies reported that there was a positive association between IGD and conscientiousness (Lehenbauer When the results of regression analysis related with the Big Five personality traits were evaluated, low scores on conscientiousness (Müller et al 2014;Wang et al 2015;Wittek et al 2016), extraversion (Müller et al 2014), openness to experience (Müller et al 2014;Wang et al 2015), and high score on neuroticism (Charlton and Danforth 2010;Li et al 2016;Mehroof and Griffiths 2010;Müller et al 2014;Wittek et al 2016) predicted gaming addiction. In addition, Li et al (2016) reported that neuroticism moderated the indirect effect of stressful life events on online gaming addiction via avoidant coping styles.…”