From Real to Digital Life: The Relationship between Students' Perceptions of School Climate Openness, Self-Efficacy, and Prosocial Gaming Behaviors

Background/purpose: Research tends to focus on understanding the school climate impacts and outcomes on real-life situations and problems while not giving deserved attention to their effects on digital life experiences and behaviors, such as those provided by videogame contexts. This article explores the relationship between school climate openness, sense of self-efficacy, and prosocial gaming behaviors. Materials/methods: A cross-sectional study using a questionnaire-based survey was conducted among 611 college students aged from 17 to 45 years old from 15 higher education institutions in Porto (Portugal). The analytical procedures involved cluster, multivariate, and meditation analyses. Results: The study revealed a relationship between students' perceptions of school climate and their sense of self-efficacy and prosocial gaming behaviors. Students' self-efficacy was proven to mediate the relationship between their perceptions of school experiences and behaviors in gaming communities. Conclusion: The study extends the literature by expanding knowledge about how students' perceptions of school climate openness for discussion, perspective-taking, and social analysis, and their sense of political efficacy, are related to how they exercise their citizenship while participating in videogame communities. The existence of a spillover effect from real to digital life was concluded.