Impact of gaming habits on motivation to attain gaming goals, perceived price fairness, and online gamer loyalty: Perspective of consistency principle

Online games are popular electronic commerce applications that have a business model of selling gaming items to gamers. Such a business model helps gamers attain gaming goals while cultivating their gaming habits. Gaming habits can lead gamers to play games automatically, indicating their impact on gamers. However, little is known about how gaming habits affect gamers’ perceptions of the prices of the gaming items, goal-attaining motivation, and online gamer loyalty. Grounded in the consistency principle, we construct a framework to explain how gaming habits impact motivation to attain gaming goals, perceived price fairness, and online gamer loyalty. We collected 5,144 responses from online gamers and used structural equation modelling to test the research model. We found that gaming habits are positively related to motivation to attain gaming goals and perceived price fairness, which are further positively related to online gamer loyalty. Ours is the first study using the perspective of the consistency principle to examine the mechanism underlying the impact of gaming habits on online gamer loyalty. Our findings provide novel insights for electronic commerce managers that they could focus on enhancing perceived price fairness and motivation to attain gaming goals, thus establishing a loyal user base. Such findings could also apply to interactive hedonic systems, indicating their potential academic impact.