Full length article Who is dating and gaming online? Categorizing, profiling, and predicting online daters and gamers Taewoo Nam, PhD Department of Public Administration and Graduate School of Governance, Sungkyunkwan University, 25-2 Sungkyunkwan-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03063, South Korea article info Article history: Received 14 November 2016 Received in revised form 19 March 2017 Accepted 20 March 2017 Keywords: Online dating Online gaming Extrinsic motivation Intrinsic motivation Attitude abstract This analysis of U.S.-based survey data from the Pew Research Center profiles and categorizes online daters and gamers to determine the factors predicting whether an individual has experience of online dating or gaming. The profiles of online daters and gamers show sociodemographic differences by user type (both daters and gamers, daters only, gamers only, and neither daters nor gamers). Attitudinal differences are also identified across those user types and sociodemographic categories. The binary lo- gistic regression analysis found that positive and negative attitudes about online dating and gaming exert a significant influence on whether an individual has experience with either. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The main reasons people use the Internet are information, communication, entertainment, work, school, relationships, mar- ket, sexuality, and self-expression. Online dating and online gaming have helped individuals fulfill their personal desires and needs in terms of communication, entertainment, relationships, sexuality, and self-expression, making online dating and gaming growing areas of personal Internet use. Only two percent of American sin- gles visited some form of online dating service before 2000, but one-quarter of U.S. singles used such services in 2002 (Sautter, Tippett, & Morgan, 2010, p. 556). According to the Pew Research Center (2016), p. 15 percent of the whole U.S. adult population had used an online dating site as of 2015. Remarkably, usage among people in their late teens and early twenties jumped threefold, and that among people in their late fifties and early sixties doubled between 2013 and 2015. In the 1990s, when few people dated online, many believed that online dating would attract shy and anxious people who typically feel nervous and distressed in real- life social interactions (McKenna & Bargh, 2000). In two decades, online dating, with its prevalent usage across the population, has evolved from a marginal to a mainstream, socially acceptable practice (Rindfuss, Choe, Bumpass, & Tsuya, 2004; Sautter et al., 2010, p. 559; Valkenburg & Peter, 2007 , p. 850). On the other hand, online gaming has gained support from fans and enthusiasts since its beginnings, but attitudes toward online games remain complex, mixed, and often uncertain among the general public. Nearly half of U.S. adults have ever played a video game, but only one in 10 adults consider themselves gamers (Duggan, 2015). Given those findings, one may wonder whether online dating and online gaming, two major areas of personal Internet use, share a significant categorical overlap. Regarding the inquiry, this study addresses the following two questions: Who uses online dating services and online gaming services? In light of that inquiry, Internet users can be categorized into four segments: both online daters and gamers, online daters only, online gamers only, and neither online daters nor gamers. The study determines the soci- odemographic conditions in which online daters and gamers have similarities and disparities. The second research question is, what factors determine whether individuals use online dating and/or online gaming? Many previous studies, shedding light on the mo- tivations and consequences of online dating and gaming, have examined the determining effects of positive influences, but they have overlooked the potential leverage of negative perceptions. This study takes a balanced approach to both positive and negative attitudes about online dating and gaming. The two research ques- tions are addressed by categorizing and profiling online daters and E-mail address: namtaewoo@skku.edu. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.03.044 0747-5632/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Computers in Human Behavior 73 (2017) 152e160