Effects of Psychological Distress and Coping Resources on Internet Gaming Disorder: Comparison between Chinese and Japanese University Students

Anise M. S. Wu, Mark H. C. Lai, Mengxuan Zhang, Masao Yogo, Shu M. Yu, Sijie Mao and Juliet Honglei Chen
Additional contact information
Anise M. S. Wu: Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Macau, Macao, China
Mark H. C. Lai: Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90007, USA
Mengxuan Zhang: Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Macau, Macao, China
Masao Yogo: Faculty of Psychology, Doshisha University, Kyoto 610-0394, Japan
Shu M. Yu: Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Macau, Macao, China
Sijie Mao: Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Macau, Macao, China
Juliet Honglei Chen: Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Macau, Macao, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 5, 1-14

Abstract: The high prevalence of Internet gaming disorder (IGD) among Asian youth indicates an urgent need to identify protective factors and examine their consistency across Asian cultures in order to facilitate cost-effective interventions. Based on the transactional theory of stress and coping, this study collected data of 1243 online gamers (45% males; 18–25 years) through an anonymous survey from universities in China and Japan and investigated whether three coping resources (i.e., mindfulness, coping flexibility, and social support) serve to protect Chinese and Japanese youth from the impact of psychological distress on IGD tendency. After adjusting for the measurement non-invariance across samples, we found that Japanese students reported higher levels of IGD tendency and psychological distress than Chinese students. The results of multiple-group SEM analyses showed that, after controlling for other predictors, mindfulness served as the strongest protective factor against IGD across samples. Moreover, the buffering effect of mindfulness on the association between psychological distress and IGD tendency of female (but not male) students was observed. Our findings highlighted the cross-cultural invariance of the impact of psychological distress and coping resources on IGD in Chinese and Japanese youth, which can be considered in future IGD prevention programs.

Keywords: Internet gaming; psychological distress; depression; anxiety; stress; mindfulness; social support; coping flexibility; cross-cultural (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/5/2951/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/5/2951/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:5:p:2951-:d:763210

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().