Due to necessary scheduled maintenance, the JMIR Publications website will be unavailable from Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.
Who will be affected?
Readers: No access to all 28 journals. We recommend accessing our articles via PubMed Central
Authors: No access to the submission form or your user account.
Reviewers: No access to your user account. Please download manuscripts you are reviewing for offline reading before Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 7:00 PM.
Editors: No access to your user account to assign reviewers or make decisions.
Copyeditors: No access to user account. Please download manuscripts you are copyediting before Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 7:00 PM.
Internet Gaming Disorder and Online Gambling Disorder: the Mediating Role of Problematic Use of Loot-Boxes
Joaquin González-Cabrera;
Vanessa Caba-Machado;
Adoración Díaz-López;
Susana Jiménez-Murcia;
Gemma Mestre;
Juan Machimbarrena
ABSTRACT
Background:
The video game industry has introduced a new form of monetization through microtransactions. A controversial example has been the so called `loot-boxes´ (LBs) as virtual objects, which are randomized and bought with legal money. In recent years, LBs have come to connect two nosologically distinct clinical problems, namely Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) and Online Gambling Disorder (OGD).
Objective:
The objective of the present study was to explore the mediating role of Problematic Use of Loot-Boxes (PU-LB) between IGD and OGD.
Methods:
This cross-sectional and analytical study used incidental sampling from 24 Spanish schools. The final sample consisted of 542 participants (96.5% male) (range 11-30 years) who played video games, bought LBs and gambled online in the last 12 months.
Results:
The results indicated that IGD had no significant direct effect on OGD (p > .05). However, the indirect effect of IGD on OGD through PU-LB was significant (p < .001). Therefore, PU-LB fully mediated the relationship between IGD and OGD. Furthermore, these results were found both in the subsamples of minors (<18 years) and young adults (≥18 years).
Conclusions:
These results may have implications for the video game industry and for decision making by policy makers.