Online games enable gamers to customize their avatars (e.g., gender and skin color) and experience flow (total concentration with intrinsic enjoyment), but there is insufficient research on how games enable gamers to customize their avatars’ items (e.g., shirt, shoes, equipment, and accessories), i.e., avatar’s item customizability, and its impact on avatar identification, and subsequently online gamer loyalty. This study contextualized the agency model of customization, collected 751 online gamers’ responses, and used structural equation modeling for analyses. Avatar’s item customizability is positively related to appearance similarity (physical similarity between the avatar and the gamer) and homophily (psychological similarity between the avatar and the gamer), which are positively related to avatar identification, and further positively related to online gamer loyalty. Moreover, flow weakens the links from appearance similarity to homophily. The findings of this study suggest game providers could enable gamers to customize their avatars’ items, thus enhancing their identification with their avatars and subsequently their loyalty to the games.

在线游戏使游戏玩家能够自定义他们的化身（例如性别和肤色）和体验流程（总专注力与内在享受），但是关于游戏如何使游戏玩家能够自定义化身的物品的研究不足。（例如衬衫，鞋子，设备和配件），即化身的商品可定制性及其对化身识别的影响，以及随后的在线玩家忠诚度。这项研究结合了定制化的代理模型，收集了751位在线游戏玩家的反馈，并使用结构方程模型进行了分析。Avatar的商品可定制性与外观相似度（虚拟化身与游戏玩家之间的身体相似性）和同形性（虚拟化身与游戏玩家之间的心理相似性）成正比，这与虚拟化身识别具有正相关关系，并且与在线游戏玩家的忠诚度也呈正相关关系。而且，流量削弱了从外观相似性到同质性的联系。这项研究的结果表明，游戏提供商可以使游戏玩家自定义头像的物品，