Virtual world versus real world: An economic study of the cyber games participation

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the link between the virtual world attributes and real world economic variables. Specifically, we employ three cyber game attributes: playtime, in-game level and achievement (in terms of accomplished ‘missions’) as the measurements of cyber games participation. We explore the spatial variation of cyber game participation with respect to real world variables including gross regional product per capita, household dispensable income, unemployment rate, number of movie theaters per capita, etc. Moreover, we also study the effects of environmental variables such as precipitation, air pollution etc. on cyber games participation. Using the game data from a very popular cyber game in China and prefecture-level data in 2011, our empirical results show that the income and the availability of other leisure activities are negatively associated with cyber game participation.