The effect of personality traits and flow experience on mobile in-game purchase intention

Digital game studies, which are an important area of creative industries, have become an important part of daily life with the development and spread of mobile devices. In this study, the effects of personality traits and attitudes of mobile game consumers on in-game purchase intentions were empirically examined within the framework of Flow Theory and Five Factor Model, and it was aimed to help researchers and professionals to obtain new insights in terms of consumer behavior and to contribute to the marketing literature. It is thought that the adaptation of the flow model, which focuses on the enjoyment of leisure activities in particular, to digital games will be important and meaningful in terms of filling the knowledge gap about how activities similar to physical activities take place in the virtual environment. The data collected online from forums related mobile games, user groups, experts in digital game technologies and people of different age groups, expertise and skill levels, which can be defined as gamers or mobile game consumers in general were analyzed through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and hypotheses were tested in this context. The findings show that there are clear links between flow experience and attitude and in-game purchase intention, personality traits of agreeableness and conscientiousness affect flow experience, agreeableness has a positive effect on flow experience, and conscientiousness has the opposite effect. In the discussion part, suggestions for practice and research are given. It is expected that the study will create new references in terms of consumer behavior for researchers, game developers or publishers when conducting relevant research, developing new products or evaluating future markets. Keywords: Mobile game, Flow theory, Optimal experience, In-game purchase intention, Five factor personality traits.