{"title":"How Motivation and Digital Affordances Shape User Behavior in a Virtual World","authors":"Joomi Lee, A. Eden","doi":"10.1080/15213269.2023.2211773","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Video game players actively interact with the virtual world, altering the content of the environment and their subsequent behaviors in meaningful ways. This study investigates how motivational processes shape user behavior, based on a framework combining approach-avoidance motivation and game affordances. The primary hypotheses predicted that in-game threats and resources shape the initial motivation to explore game affordances at variable patterns. Using a custom-designed game with varying threats and resources, an experiment (N = 125) examined user behavior during various motivationally relevant in-game contexts (e.g., night, day, low-threat, and high-threat). We found that players adaptively employ game affordances to gain benefits and avoid threats, and individual differences in trait-level motivational reactivity moderated these effects, forming distinctive behavioral patterns in creative activities and combat. These findings clarify motivation and affordances as key shapers of user behavior in games and demonstrate that gameplay is made up of discrete, environmentally adaptive behaviors.","PeriodicalId":47932,"journal":{"name":"Media Psychology","volume":"26 1","pages":"551 - 578"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Media Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2023.2211773","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT Video game players actively interact with the virtual world, altering the content of the environment and their subsequent behaviors in meaningful ways. This study investigates how motivational processes shape user behavior, based on a framework combining approach-avoidance motivation and game affordances. The primary hypotheses predicted that in-game threats and resources shape the initial motivation to explore game affordances at variable patterns. Using a custom-designed game with varying threats and resources, an experiment (N = 125) examined user behavior during various motivationally relevant in-game contexts (e.g., night, day, low-threat, and high-threat). We found that players adaptively employ game affordances to gain benefits and avoid threats, and individual differences in trait-level motivational reactivity moderated these effects, forming distinctive behavioral patterns in creative activities and combat. These findings clarify motivation and affordances as key shapers of user behavior in games and demonstrate that gameplay is made up of discrete, environmentally adaptive behaviors.
期刊介绍:
Media Psychology is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to publishing theoretically-oriented empirical research that is at the intersection of psychology and media communication. These topics include media uses, processes, and effects. Such research is already well represented in mainstream journals in psychology and communication, but its publication is dispersed across many sources. Therefore, scholars working on common issues and problems in various disciplines often cannot fully utilize the contributions of kindred spirits in cognate disciplines.