Therapeutic role of player self-efficacy in online gaming

We investigated the effects of life and game self-efficacy of players of online games on the psychosocial factors of depression, loneliness, and aggression, exploring these relationships via an integrated path model using multidimensional factors of each construct. With survey data from 1,227 Korean online gamers, we examined how coping and social aspects of life and game self-efficacy affect these psychosocial factors. The results highlighted the important role of life self-efficacy, which significantly and negatively affected loneliness and depression; however, the results showed positive associations of game self-efficacy with these factors. Life self-efficacy had greater positive effects on depression and loneliness when mediated by preferred game playing. These findings provide novel contributions to research on the relationship between life and game self-efficacy, as therapeutic prerequisite factors in online game playing, and players’ psychosocial factors.