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The growing popularity of digital entertainment, growing user bases and ongoing advancements in game design and technology significantly made the online gaming business stand out as a growing sector with enormous growth potential. As a key factor in this expansion, game creators place a lot of emphasis on creating more immersive and interactive experiences, such as avatars. Drawing on the self-determination theory, self-congruity theory and psychological ownership theory, this study aims to understand how avatar characteristics influence players’ commitment and loyalty to online games through emotional attachment to avatars and perceived alignment with their self-image. The data were collected through a structured questionnaire. The study performed structural equation modelling using AMOS version 21. Based on the analytical results, avatar loyalty is strongly predicted by psychological ownership and self-congruity, whereas self-congruity is adversely affected by customization. The study contributes to the marketing literature by shifting the application of self-congruity and psychological ownership from general gaming contexts to avatar-specific interactions, thereby offering a more granular understanding of identity-based mechanisms in digital environments. It further extends prior research by simultaneously examining the mediating roles of psychological ownership and self-congruity and by highlighting the nuanced effect of customization on self-perception. The study is beneficial for game designers by emphasizing the need to balance customization features with users’ self-concept alignment to enhance long-term engagement and loyalty.
George et al. (Tue,) studied this question.