Exploring user motivations to proactive stickiness through pleasure-arousal-dominance model towards online games

As the gamers market has a positive outlook in the post-pandemic period, the revenue of online games is expected to increase. User motivations and the pleasure-arousal-dominance (PAD) model are adopted in this study to explain why individuals continue to play a particular online game. User motivations (achievement, immersion, and social components) are utilized as antecedents of the PAD model, where achievement includes advancement and mechanics; immersion includes role-playing; and social includes socializing and relationship. Social influence and sunk costs act as moderators to examine the relationships between pleasure and players’ proactive stickiness. A total of 801 valid responses from online game players were collected and used for data analysis. The results revealed causation relationships among advancement, mechanics, escapism to dominance, and energetic arousal. Socializing influenced dominance with the relationship affecting energetic arousal. Furthermore, dominance influenced energetic arousal, and both affected pleasure, leading to the effect of proactive stickiness. Social influence and sunk costs were also proven to have moderating effects. It is suggested that gaming companies can utilize the proposed motivations to design the games in order to stimulate gamers’ emotional states and further increase their online game proactive stickiness.