Therefore, the focus of this study is to find out why so many college aged individuals have become invested in esports, and what factors have contributed to their overall consumption. To best address these questions, a survey was chosen for this study. According to Davis and Lachlan (2017), surveys provide straightforward questioning, and collection of large amounts of information on a target audience, which are reasons why choosing a survey was important for this study.

Three research questions were posed, aiming to find esports consumers' motivations, the influence of streaming apps, and the impact of COVID-19 on the subject’s esports practices. With this in mind, questions that were clearly phrased helped make sure the subjects answered questions most accurate to their experience. Additionally, a large number of subjects made sure that esports consumers from a wide variety of backgrounds were heard from. 

Convenience and snowball sampling were used to distribute this survey. The survey link was posted to the researcher’s Instagram, LinkedIn pages, and snapchat pages, and sent to esports consumers through direct messaging. Additionally, the survey link was posted in esports fan pages on Reddit. Convenience sampling was used as the researcher utilized previously formed and accessible audiences to recruit subjects. Snowball sampling was also used, as the researcher counted on subjects’ to further distribute the study through word of mouth.

After data collection, 111 survey respondents were recorded. 148 people took part in the survey, but 38 individuals were omitted for various reasons. 22 responses were omitted for being a current student at Endicott college, while 12 were not included for being outside of this study’s desired age range. Out of 111 recorded responses, 82 were males, 28 were females, and 1 participant was non-binary. 

The independent variable can be defined as the subject’s motivations. To find this data, subjects were first asked what their primary motivations were to play video games, and were given the following options: Competition, fun/entertainment, camaraderie/spend time with friends, escape from real world problems, passing time, making money, to stream. 

These options were formed from a combination of research from Orsoglu et al., (2023), Kohls et al., (2023), Billings and Mikkilineni’s (2023), and Hedlund (2023). This gave subjects various options that are common among esports consumers, and gave researchers an accurate glimpse into what personal factors affect esports consumption. 

The third and final research question focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, and if pandemic lockdowns had any effect on esports practices.

The independent variable for this research question was the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. In order to find if this time period had an effect on esports consumption, subjects were asked if they played and watched esports before, during, and after the pandemic lockdowns. The pandemic was defined as March 2020-August 2020, and each of these questions had the subject answer either “yes” or “no”. 

Esports consumption was the dependent variable for all three research questions. Each independent variable was supported by the same line of questioning, and aided single item and bivariate analysis following data collection. These questions asked subjects how many hours per week they spent playing or viewing esports before, during, and after the pandemic, and helped the researcher gather data for all three research questions. For these types of questions, subjects were given nine options separated by five hour increments, ranging from 1-5 hours up to 41+ hours per week.