• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.15 no.4
• /
• pp.277-301
• /
• 2020

This study surveyed 503 adults to examine the effect of gaming disorder classification, recently announced by World Health Organization(WHO), when it is applied to Korean game market. Considering the difference in respondents' background knowledge on gaming disorder, half of the respondents were randomly assigned to read an informative news article describing WHO's decision and its expected effect on domestic game industry. Based on previous literature of gaming disorder, we categorized respondents into a normal-use group and a potentially problematic-use group. As a result of analyses, it was found that the gaming disorder classification would yield overall reduction of game-related consumption in terms of gaming time(24%), game cost(28%), the number of games(22%), etc. The potentially problematic group showed higher willingness to pay for gaming than the normal group did, even if the game cost presumably increases due to the gaming disorder classification. A similar outcome was observed in those with high stress levels. This implies that the policy to solve game addiction problems may ironically lead to unexpected cost increases to the target group of the policy. Hence, problematic groups, especially, highly stressful people and the people with the lack of self-control, need to be considered when the gaming disorder classification policy is established. Furthermore, the informative news article had the preventive effect on the attitude and the intention of the people with moderate or high self-control capacity, but not to the people with gaming-additive tendencies, Again, this finding confirms the necessity of the tweezers policy to refine target groups by their characteristics and prepare for differentiated policies. When the gaming disorder classification is simply adopted with no consideration of domestic circumstances, irreversible loss could affect Korean game users, game industries, and related companies. This calls for urgent cooperation between academia, government, and industry to set up appropriate measures to deal with the gaming disorder classification.