Online Gaming and Personality: Explaining Gamers’ Cheating Intention

Abstract

Cheating in online games poses a risk to game publishers, as it deters other gamers and reduces revenues. These facts make it essential for game publishers to understand ‘who’ in the sense of gamers with what personalities have cheating intentions. Building on psychology research, we draw on (a) the big five personality traits and (b) the dark triad personality traits to explain how these reflect gamers’ personalities and together lead to cheating intentions. Following a configurational approach (N=192), we reveal two configurations explaining high cheating intention and one explaining low cheating intention. We contribute to online gaming research by revealing that gamers with cheating intentions have specific personalities. We advance information systems (IS) personality research by combining broad and dark triad traits to explain divergent behavior like cheating.