From parasocial to social: A study of relationships among parasocial interaction, loyalty behavior and perceived interactivity on live video streaming platform

• Main Authors: Chu, Chia-Chi, 朱家齊
• Other Authors: Huang, Hui-Ping
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/c479df

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 傳播研究所 === 106 === This study uses parasocial interaction perspective to observe the audience’s use behavior of the Twitch platform. Based on past research, it first examines factors affecting parasocial interaction, including broadcasters’ attraction, the audience’s motives, attachment style and use time. However, the interaction between broadcasters and the audience may not be just parasocial, through certain loyalty behavior such as follow, donation and subscription, the audience can connect and interact with the broadcasters in a real way, which can further stimulate their perception of interactivity. This study thus also examines the relationship between loyalty behavior and perceived interactivity, including perceived control, reciprocity, connectedness, synchronicity and interpersonality. This study conducts a web survey to collect data. In total, 674 questionnaires are successfully collected. Results show that the broadcasters’ physical attraction, social attraction, the audience’s social motivation, use time and preoccupied attachment have significant positive effects, whereas secure and dismissive-avoidant attachment have significant negative effects on parasocial interaction. Parasocial interaction has significant negative effects on follow, but has significant positive effects on donation and subscription. Follow has significant negative effects on perceived reciprocity, connectedness and interpersonality. Donation has no significant impact on perceived interactivity, but subscription has significant positive effects on all dimensions of perceived interactivity. This study shows that parasocial interaction can be turned into real interaction by loyalty behavior. Along with the evolution of communication technologies, the audience’s social motivation has replaced instrumental motivation to be the key factor of parasocial interaction. Use time also plays a more important role in affecting prarsocial interaction on live video streaming platform compared with traditional media. Results from this study also have marketing implications. Broadcasters or platform managers can conduct marketing research to identify target market and provide broadcasters strategies about how to increase social attraction. They can also broadcast live videos as frequently as possible in order to increase the audience’s use time. In addition, broadcasters should view obtaining subscriptions as the primary goal, offer subscribers more benefits with less cost in order to appeal potential subscribers and get more re-subscriptions from regular customers. Moreover, as most of the audience watches live video streaming in an inattentive way, broadcasters may arrange meaningful interactions with the audience from time to time to build more buzz. Platform managers can also design new functions to observe the audience’s use behavior and offer rewards to stimulate their use time.