Introducing Cryptocurrency Payments to Mobile Games – Exploring the Factors Affecting Intentions to Play and Purchase

🚀 Introduction

The gaming industry is a massive, rapidly growing industry, with most of its revenues coming from free-to-play (F2P) mobile games. However, the recent paradigm of cryptocurrencies and crypto games is shifting the gaming landscape. While it has been extensively researched why people play traditional mobile games and purchase in-game items, there is little research on crypto games that confirms that the same factors also apply in this emerging market. Therefore, the following research questions were studied:

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1. What are the factors that influence the intention to play games and the intention to purchase in games?

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2. How do these factors influence the intention to play and the intention to purchase in crypto games?

📚 Literature Review

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To answer the 1. research question, a comprehensive literature review was conducted on the theories used for understanding user intentions in the gaming context. 1) The most common theories on user intentions in the gaming context were reviewed 2) Attitude, subjective norms, perceived enjoyment, and perceived usefulness were the most relevant factors 3) 8 relationships were hypothesized between the factors and the intentions to play and to purchase in crypto games 4) Based on the hypotheses, a research model was constructed

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1) Behavioral Theories:

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2) Key Constructs:

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3) Hypotheses:

4) Research model:

📋 Study

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To answer the 2. research question, the research model was tested on empirical data, which was collected via an online survey. 1) The online survey was announced to the community of users of the cryptocurrency Pi 2) A sample of 79 users (from 40 countries) was collected, who had played a few crypto games, where they could spend Pi to purchase in-game items 3) Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the research model

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1) Survey:

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2) Sample:

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3) Analysis method:

💡 Results and Discussion

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The results of the study confirmed 4 out of 8 hypotheses: 1) Attitude → Intention to play & to purchase 2) Perceived enjoyment & usefulness → Intention to play 3) Subjective norms insignificant

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1) Attitude

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2) Perceived enjoyment and usefulness

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3) Subjective (social) norms???

📈 Outlook

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This research has both theoretical and practical implications. In the future, some limitations and further possibilities should be addressed. 1) The study validates the relevance of factors from traditional gaming for crypto games 2) Based on the results, crypto game developers should address attitudes first 3) Future research should focus on generalizing results to different types of crypto games

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Theoretical contributions:

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Practical implications:

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Limitations and further research:

🗃️ Infographic

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