Development of habitual behaviour in online social gaming: understanding the moderating role of network externality

Game habit and game addiction are distinguished in terms of psychological motivation, meaning, and a player's experience of gaming. The majority of contemporary studies address either the challenges or difficulties of particular habit formation often in the context of disciplined force or negative consequences of game addiction. Game habit does not necessarily imply game addiction. The objective of this study is to investigate the key antecedents of game habit formation using a quantitative study with 341 respondents collected in West Malaysia and analysed via structural equation modeling. The results demonstrate that game habit formation is formed more naturally with automatic control mechanisms, influenced by play intensity, flow experience, and self-efficacy, and the effect of play intensity towards game habit is interacted by network externality.