Social Atmospherics, Affective Response, and Behavioral Intention Associated With Esports Events

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to conceptualize social atmospherics in the context of esports attendance and examine the relationship among social atmospherics, affective responses, and behavioral intention. Based on review literature, we conceptualized social atmospherics as five dimensions in esports events' environments: social density, suitable behavior, similarity, cosplay, and cheering behavior. Notably, cosplay (i.e., a portmanteau of the words "costumes" and "play") and cheering behavior factors adopted from extant social atmospherics served to capture the unique features associated with esports events. Via an online survey, data were collected (n = 372) from esports fans who have experienced attending esports events. The data set was split into half; the first data set (n = 189) was used to examine the psychometric properties of the measurement model and the second data set (n = 184) was employed to test the hypothesized model. The initial model fit was not shown to be acceptable. The model was re-estimated using the second data set after dropping four items with low factor loadings, resulting in the acceptable model fit. The results via structural equation modeling indicated that cheering behavior, similarity, cosplay, and social density positively and significantly influenced affective responses and behavioral intention. However, there was no significant relationship between suitable behavior and affective responses. In terms of theoretical contributions, we tested a five-factor model of social atmospherics associated with esports events and its effects on behavioral intention through affective responses. The findings in this study extend the sportscape model (Wakefield and Sloan, 1995) by incorporating the mediating effect of affective responses and expand the utility of the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) framework as a viable theory that can explain esports consumption behavior.

Effect of Prior Gameplay Experience on the Relationships between Esports Gameplay Intention and Live Esports Streaming Content

“…To explain the recent esports phenomena, studies of esports have been conducted across diverse disciplines, such as sport management, gaming and gambling, and mental wellness [2][3][4][5][6]. In sport management, Jang, Kim et al [7] identified social atmospheric elements (i.e., social density, suitable Sustainability 2021, 13, 8019 2 of 13 behavior, similarity, cosplay, and cheering behavior) to measure esports event participants' perceptions. The researchers found that all five factors influenced affective responses and intention to re-visit esports events in the future directly and indirectly, respectively.…”

A systematic review on spectator behavior in esports: why do people watch?

“…Significant direct and/or indirect predictors or associations in esports spectatorship behavioral intention were found (Jang et al. , 2020, 2021b; Kim and Kim, 2020; Lim et al.…”

“…The outcome measures besides on-site and online esports consumption were behavioral intention (Jang et al. , 2021b; Jang et al. , 2020; Kim and Kim, 2020; Lim et al.…”

“…, 2020), sports fandom (Tang et al. , 2022), SOR framework (Jang et al. , 2020), structural factors (Brown et al.…”

“…Three papers investigated the influence of esports gameplay behavior/intention on media consumption of esports events, live esports streaming content and intention of esports broadcast consumption (Jang and Byon, 2020; Jang et al. , 2020, 2021a).…”