Antecedents of esports gameplay intention: Genre as a moderator

The purpose of this study was to identify three categories (i.e., imagination, physical enactment, and sport simulation) of esports game genres and to examine the impact those genres have on the relationship that exists between antecedents and consumers’ esports gameplay intention. The hypothesized model was based on the esports consumption (ESC) model (Jang & Byon, 2020), which is grounded in the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) (Venkatesh, Thong, & Xu, 2012). Data ( N = 978) were collected via Amazon M-Turk from participants who had prior experience playing esports games. The findings indicated that the imagination group was statistically different when compared to the physical enactment and the sport simulation groups. However, the physical enactment group and the sport simulation group were found to be similar. The findings of the current study contributed to a better understanding of what drives esports consumers’ esports gameplay intention across game genres. • Proposing three new categories of esports game genres. • Validating the ESC model's utility in predicting esports gameplay intention by incorporating esports genre as the moderator. • Contributing to furthering our understanding associated with esports consumption behavior.