플랫폼별 게임이 범죄에 미치는 영향: 국가단위 자료를 이용한 분석

The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyze the impact of video game platforms on crimes. The ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) of the U.S., a rating institution of video games by their contents, defines video games with intensively violent contents as Mrated. In terms of the 2015 sales volume of top 10 video games in the worldwide, the M-rated games by ESRB accounted for 48.1% in overall console market, followed by 6.8% in PC/online game market and 0.0% in mobile game market. According to the IV (Instrumental Variable) panel data analysis which takes endogeneity problem into considerations, the correlation between per capita console game consumption and crime rate is quite high while any noticeable relationship between per capita PC/online game consumption and crime rate is not revealed. In particular, it is noted that per capita console game consumption did affect juvenile crime rate and felony rate. The results show that console games with violent contents have negatively affect young generations who lack of self-control and imply that violent console games have greater impacts on injury crimes than on property crimes. Compared with other countries, however, South Korea has not sufficient legislations to regulate violent console games. This paper suggests that South Korea should reinforce and/or amend its legislation to effectively govern violent console games.