Sustaining eSports Industry and Regulatory Focus: Empirical Evidence From Chinese Universities

This study examined the factors that affect the attitude and behavioral intentions toward electronic sports (eSports) among students of higher education institutions based on the technology acceptance model (TAM). The conditional impact of preventive regulatory focus was analyzed in various aspects developed on the regulatory focus theory. These aspects comprised of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived risk on the attitude toward eSports. Accordingly, data were collected from 293 students of higher education institutions in China's Henan Province, presenting a 54.56% response rate. The PLS-SEM analysis was subsequently implemented to confirm the proposed hypotheses. The empirical findings confirmed the significant positive impact of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use on the attitude toward eSports. However, perceived risk negatively affected the attitude toward eSports. Meanwhile, the findings on the moderating hypotheses found a negligible impact on preventive regulatory focus. This impact was found explicitly on the perceived usefulness-perceived ease of use link with attitude toward eSports. However, the preventive regulatory focus negatively moderated the perceived risk attitude toward eSports. Finally, the implication and limitations were illustrated at the end of the paper.