Behavioral consequences of Pokémon GO: The exaggerated picture

Abstract

Overlaying virtual species in real-world environments by Pokémon Go has sparked controversy over the security, privacy, social, ethical, and moral implications of mixed-reality technologies. While the GPS-enabled Pokémon Go in-game activities have contributed to improving players' relationships with their real-world surroundings and enriched players' mixed-reality experiences, the question of whether players' in-game experiences have driven them to unintentionally develop unwanted behaviors that could evolve to be part of their real-life habits remains unanswered. Inspired by previously reported real-world Pokémon Go-related stories, we formulate six hypothetical in-game scenarios that place respondents in vulnerable positions, and then ask 5739 crowd workers about the most likely behavioral decisions that they would take when being engaged in these mixed-reality scenarios. We then compare the decisions of 3492 active Pokémon Go players with the decisions obtained from non-players and present an extensive investigation of whether Pokémon Go has contributed to forming motives for trespassing into private properties, violating respected regulations, compromising personal physical safety, violating street-crossing rules and parking cars in illegal spots. Overall, the long-term negative impact that Pokémon Go players have exhibited in our studies is minimal, and could have been caused by other influential factors, such as players' contextual and personal attributes.