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Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science

ISSN Online: 2576-0548 ISSN Print: 2576-0556 CODEN: JHASAY
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ArticleOpen Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2023.07.010

An Eye-tracking Study of In-game Purchasing Behaviors of Video Games

Ruida Wang

The Frederick Gunn School, 22 Kirby Rd, Washington, CT, USA.

*Corresponding author: Ruida Wang

Published: August 22,2023

Abstract

Games serve both functional and entertaining roles, which are crucial human activities. Video game is comparatively young and increasingly popular among different types of games. As a result, video games are more and more dominant in people's life. This study leverages eye-tracking technology to investigate consumers' in-game purchasing behaviors. "Skins" are adopted as stimuli. Participants are randomly assigned to two experimental groups. Group A participants viewed skin images directly. Group B participants were informed they would purchase skins and view skin images labeled with price tags. An eye-tracker recorded participants' gazing behaviors. The eye-tracking results show that when price tags were added, participants in Group B had a longer First Fixation Duration than participants of Group A. Furthermore, the heat maps indicate that Group B's participants paid more attention to price tags. However, the results have marginal statistical significance, and the potential cause is the comparatively small sample size. Moreover, when price tags were attached to each skin, female participants in Group B showed significantly higher Regression Counts than males in Group B. This indicates that females tend to revisit skins in the purchasing scenario. Potential reasons for the above findings are also discussed. This research could improve the understanding of in-game shopping behavior and facilitate the development of the video game industry.

Keywords

Video game, Purchasing behavior, In-game shopping, Eye-tracking, Gender difference

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How to cite this paper

An Eye-tracking Study of In-game Purchasing Behaviors of Video Games

How to cite this paper: Ruida Wang. (2023) An Eye-tracking Study of In-game Purchasing Behaviors of Video GamesJournal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science7(7), 1302-1306.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2023.07.010