ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Sports Management, Marketing, and Economics
This article is part of the Research TopicIntegrative Perspectives on the Student-Athlete Experience: A Multi-Disciplinary FocusView all 9 articles
Exploring Perceptual Differences and Constraints in Esports among American University Students
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Delaware, Newark, United States
- 2Delaware State University, Dover, United States
- 3Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China
- 4Changsha University, Changsha, China
- 5Kyungsung University, Busan, Republic of Korea
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Esports have become a popular competitive gaming and intramural activity in higher education institutions. This study explores perceptual differences and constraints in Esports among American university students. 590 university students completed the Profile of Esports Perception—pre-validated questionnaire of five perceptual factors, namely attraction, economics, recognition, socialisation, and technicity. Multivariate analysis of variance and analysis of variance were utilised to assess the significant perceptual differences in Esports. Results revealed that recognition and socialisation were the lowest and highest scoring factors among the five perceptual factors, respectively. Findings indicated significant differences between male and female students, as well as sports players and non-players across attraction, economics, socialisation, recognition, and technicity. Significant differences were also observed in subgroups gender, playing status, and years played with respect to the negative factor of constraints. The findings may prove valuable to administrators of higher education institutions in understanding the opportunities and challenges of Esports.
Keywords: collegiate esports, Perceptual differences, constraints, factors, American university students
Received: 21 Jul 2025; Accepted: 23 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Luo, Chen, Chang, Yang and Lee. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xianhua Luo, xluo2355@gmail.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.