Burnout, resilience, and coping among esports players: A network analysis approach

Burnout among esports players is a serious issue affecting competitive and professional players. The present study investigated the relationship between resilience, coping, and burnout among esports players using network analysis. Esports players (N = 453; Mage = 23.0 years, SD = 4.18; in the top 40% of in-game rank) who competed in one of seven popular team-based esports completed the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-10), Coping Functions Questionnaire (CFQ; assessing problem-focused, emotion-focused, and avoidance coping), and Athlete Burnout Scale (ABO-S; assessing a reduced sense of accomplishment, physical exhaustion, and negative feelings towards esport). Responses were assessed with Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator regularised partial correlations (EBICglasso). Findings showed a distinct network of resilience factors, coping skills, and symptoms of burnout. More specifically, resilience factors were negatively associated with symptoms of burnout and positively associated with problem-focused, emotion-focused, and avoidance coping. Problem-focused coping had a strong expected influence on the network and was positively associated with multiple resilience factors. Moreover, avoidance coping had a strong influence on the network but was positively associated with multiple symptoms of burnout. Finally, a reduced sense of accomplishment (burnout) was negatively associated with multiple resilience factors and positively associated with avoidance coping. The combined results of the present study suggest that resilience and coping are important factors for understanding burnout among esports players.