Do coping mechanisms and being an esport player moderate the relationship between psychiatric symptoms and gaming disorder? (Preprint)

Background: The emerging popularity of videogame playing (‘gaming’) as a hobby and as a professional sport raises awareness about both the benefits and possible downsides of the activity. Although a healthy and passionate hobby for most, a minority of gamers experiences addiction-like symptoms and are considered to have gaming disorder (GD). GD was previously found to be related to aversive conditions, such as depression or anxiety, as well as putatively maladaptive coping strategies. Objective: The aim of the present study was twofold, to explore the (i) moderating effect of different coping strategies and (ii) type of videogame usage (professional [esport] or recreational) on the relationship between psychiatric symptoms and GD. Methods: A sample of 3,476 gamers (90.1% males; mean age = 23.20 years, SD = 6.48) was recruited via the website and social networking site of the most popular gaming magazine in Hungary (GameStar). Results: It was found that the main effect of psychiatric symptoms was moderate-to-large in all models, while the moderation effects were significant for four out of eight coping strategies (i.e., self-blame/self-distraction, denial, emotional/social support, active coping). However, the explained variance of the models only increased negligibly (from 0.3 to 0.5%) due to the moderation effect. The direction of the moderations was as expected (i.e., putatively maladaptive strategies were associated with more GD symptoms when the level of psychiatric symptoms was high, while putatively adaptive strategies were associated with less). Furthermore, no considerable moderation effect of the player type (recreational vs. professional players) was found on the association between psychiatric symptoms and GD. Conclusions: Future studies should be designed to understand coping-related mechanisms in the background of video gaming and GD better.