How Motivation and Digital Affordances Shape User Behavior in a Virtual World

Abstract

Video game players actively interact with the virtual world, altering the content of the environment and their subsequent behaviors in meaningful ways. This study investigates how motivational processes shape user behavior, based on a framework combining approach-avoidance motivation and game affordances. The primary hypotheses predicted that in-game threats and resources shape the initial motivation to explore game affordances at variable patterns. Using a custom-designed game with varying threats and resources, an experiment (N = 125) examined user behavior during various motivationally relevant in-game contexts (e.g., night, day, low-threat, and high-threat). We found that players adaptively employ game affordances to gain benefits and avoid threats, and individual differences in trait-level motivational reactivity moderated these effects, forming distinctive behavioral patterns in creative activities and combat. These findings clarify motivation and affordances as key shapers of user behavior in games and demonstrate that gameplay is made up of discrete, environmentally adaptive behaviors.