Yearning for Love: Exploring the Interplay of Parasocial Romantic Attachment, Loneliness, and Purchase Behavior Within Dating Simulation Games

Jeanette Buhleier, Benjamin Engelstätter, Omid Tafreschi

2025

Abstract

Female-oriented dating simulation games (i.e., games centered around the romantic relationships between a female player and its game characters) have grown increasingly popular internationally and developed into a profitable business model. The genuine feelings of love players develop for these virtual characters (i.e., parasocial love), particularly the motifs behind such attachments, have garnered rapid curiosity. Applying the parasocial compensation hypothesis, this study conducted an online survey among female players of the free-to-play dating simulation game Mystic Messenger to explore romantic loneliness as a motivator for players’ parasocial love and its impact on players’ purchasing behavior. The correlation analysis revealed a weak negative relationship between romantic loneliness and parasocial love, indicating a complementary rather than compensatory function of such attachments. Further, while the strength of para-romantic feelings did not drive in-game spending, romantic loneliness was negatively associated with willingness to invest money. These findings suggest that other motivations drive real-money investments in romance-themed games, highlighting the complexity of player behavior in this context.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Buhleier J., Engelstätter B. and Tafreschi O. (2025). Yearning for Love: Exploring the Interplay of Parasocial Romantic Attachment, Loneliness, and Purchase Behavior Within Dating Simulation Games. In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS; ISBN 978-989-758-749-8, SciTePress, pages 405-416. DOI: 10.5220/0013203800003929

in Bibtex Style

@conference{iceis25,
author={Jeanette Buhleier and Benjamin Engelstätter and Omid Tafreschi},
title={Yearning for Love: Exploring the Interplay of Parasocial Romantic Attachment, Loneliness, and Purchase Behavior Within Dating Simulation Games},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS},
year={2025},
pages={405-416},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013203800003929},
isbn={978-989-758-749-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS
TI - Yearning for Love: Exploring the Interplay of Parasocial Romantic Attachment, Loneliness, and Purchase Behavior Within Dating Simulation Games
SN - 978-989-758-749-8
AU - Buhleier J.
AU - Engelstätter B.
AU - Tafreschi O.
PY - 2025
SP - 405
EP - 416
DO - 10.5220/0013203800003929
PB - SciTePress