Gender disparities in esports – An explanatory mixed-methods approach

Abstract

Within the last decade, esports (i.e., the competitive play of video games) has conquered substantial parts of digital entertainment with annually increasing revenue and consumer participation. Interestingly, while there exists a wide variety of esports titles, there is an observable gender disparity across them, as female esports players are substantially underrepresented at both casual and particularly at professional levels. Building on expectancy theory and achievement motivation, this study used an explanatory follow-up mixed-methods approach to explore the observed gender disparity. Using the exemplary case of League of Legends, we carried out a cross-sectional survey with both male and female League of Legends players. The results were mostly in line with expectancy theory showing no difference regarding expectancy and instrumentality between male and female players. Additionally, contrary to our hypotheses, we found higher valence and achievement motivation levels for female players. We facilitated three online focus-group discussions, each with a different gender distribution (female vs. mixed vs. male), to derive potential explanations for the findings. From the analysis of the focus-group discussions, we demonstrated that cultural and dispositional differences contribute to the observed gender differences. Among these, the differing perceptions of in-game culture and individual attributions (i.e., goal orientation, locus of control) were prevalent reasons influencing female participation.