Video games playing: A substitute for cultural consumptions?

Abstract

This article discusses some economic and cultural features of video games and posits that this medium belongs within the core of cultural economics. We further provide an applied investigation of video game usage. Using data for Spain, we estimate zero-inflated ordered probit models to control for an excess of zeros in our ordinal dependent variable. We find that the probability of game playing increases with the consumption of other cultural goods (e.g., listening to music or watching television) or active involvement in artistic activities (e.g., writing or visual arts production). Game playing is in general an urban phenomenon; it is positively associated with the ownership of home equipment and access to new technologies, but decreases with greater time restrictions of a person. The main differences to the traditional art formats is that game playing appeals particularly to younger, usually less educated cohorts.