Do Online Game Players Overplay

Abstract

The amount of time youth spend on game-playing is significant, with a recent representative survey pinning the number at 0.84 hours per day. To investigate the extent to which gameplaying can be attributed to self-control problems, I first present a model of leisure consumption, followed by implementing two field experiments to test the implications of the model.The model has four predictions. First, players who are aware of their time-inconsistency play weakly shorter and weakly fewer sessions. Second, only players aware of their time-inconsistency would use a commitment device. Third, when commitment is available, sophisticated players play weakly shorter but weakly more sessions. Fourth, the model predicts that only cue-sensitive players would use multiple commitment devices during the same game session.In the first experiment, I monitored the amount of time 105 undergraduates spent playing online games for a period of 3.5 months. Students assigned to the treatment group were additionally given software that they could use to limit their duration of play. I found that the demand for commitment appears limited---while 79 percent of the treatment subjects used the software voluntarily in the first four weeks, the fraction eventually dropped to around 5 percent. At the end of the experiment, 10.4 percent of treatment subjects had a positive willingness-to-pay for the software. There is suggestive evidence that usage of the commitment device reduces duration of play but not frequency of play---subjects in the treatment group played an estimated 66.4 percent less than those in the control group, as measured by total hours played. The difference is driven by a reduction among heavy players, and persists even after most subjects stopped using the devices. Lastly, I find that players on average overestimated how long they would play.In the second experiment, I find that 12-35 percent of subjects provided with a commitment device manifested a demand for it, depending on what threshold one uses to categorize a subject as having a demand. The availability of commitment device reduces the number of long sessions while increasing that of short sessions. Lastly, players with commitment devices stay longer with the game.

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