The roles of parental expectation stress and regulatory focus in internet gaming disorder through a gender lens: the potential emotion regulation/coping mechanisms in adolescents

Abstract This study represents the novel effort to apply regulatory focus theory within the context of Internet gaming disorder (IGD), incorporating the often-neglected external environmental factor of parental expectation stress and the internal psychological mechanisms of emotion regulation/coping. A sample of 998 Chinese senior secondary students completed a battery of structured questionnaires. To scrutinize a sequential mediational model—from parental expectation stress through regulatory focus to IGD—we conducted a multiple-group structural equation modeling analysis, elucidating the distinct emotion regulation/coping mechanisms operating in male and female students. Results revealed an intriguing gender difference in the proposed regulatory focus and emotion regulation/coping model. We found that IGD symptoms in boys were primarily explained by regulatory focus systems (β prevention focus = 0.044, 95%CI = [0.021, 0.076], mediation proportion = 35.4%; β promotion focus = -0.018, 95%CI = [-0.035, -0.008], mediation proportion = 14.5%), whereas IGD symptoms in girls were primarily explained by emotion regulation/coping systems (β rumination = 0.015, 95%CI = [0.004, 0.028], mediation proportion = 13.3%; β blaming others = 0.015, 95%CI = [0.001, 0.018], mediation proportion = 13.3%). For both genders, parental academic expectation stress was associated with IGD directly and indirectly via prevention focus and rumination (β boys = 0.005, 95%CI = [0.002, 0.011], mediation proportion = 4.0%; β girls = 0.007, 95%CI = [0.002, 0.013]; mediation proportion = 6.2%). Our findings suggest that boys’ problematic gaming behaviors might be more influenced by the motivational system (i.e., regulatory focus), whereas girls are more influenced by maladaptive emotion regulation/coping mechanisms. These insights enhance the understanding of how environmental, motivational, and emotion regulation/coping systems synergistically impact on IGD, informing clinical implications for the prevention and treatment of adolescent IGD.