Who Watches Live Streaming in China?

With millions of viewers globally, live streaming is a new social media that can deliver video content in real time and with many social interaction functions. Our research aims to understand the personality traits and the motivations of active live streaming viewers as well as their user behaviors in the general population in China. Our results indicate that extraversion was negatively associated with live streaming use, while openness was positively associated. The main motivations to watch live streaming were social interaction, information gathering, and entertainment, and they were associated with different frequencies of use and genre selection. Financial tipping behavior was positively associated with social interaction. Furthermore, motivations mediated the effects of personality traits on live streaming use. People high in openness were more likely to be motivated to chat by information needs. Among extraverts, those who were more social watched fewer streams. We demonstrated that personality traits and motivations can jointly predict live streaming use. The current study not only provides the first evidence of live streaming use with personality traits and motivations but also expands the perspective on individual difference with the mediation analysis. Practically, the person–situation joint interpretation can give industry a clear indication on how to design personalized user experience for people with different personality traits and motivations.To get more news about 39bet-xsmb-xổ số tây ninh-xổ số binh phước-xổ số binh dương-xổ số đồng nai, you can visit official website.

Live streaming—a new way to deliver video content in real time—has attracted millions of users globally in recent years. The popularity of digital cameras and the increased availability of network access have facilitated the substantial growth of video transmission on the Internet. In 2016, live streaming ranked as the top application of mobile data traffic and accounted for over 34% of total mobile data (Informa Telecoms and Media, 2016). Since 2015, popular services such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have all launched live streaming functions. Twitch, a popular live streaming platform owned by Amazon, boasts over 188 million monthly viewers and 5.5 million monthly broadcasters (Twitch tracker, 2020). In China alone, in 2020, there were more than 559 million live streaming users across about 270 platforms, implying 62% penetration of China’s Internet users (CNNIC, 2020). Who are the users of live streaming in China? Why do they adopt this new media application? The current research seeks to answer the questions by examining the relationship between psychological individual differences of viewers and their behavior engagement.

From a user’s perspective, we could draw more inferences about how personality traits and motivations can influence live streaming use. Furthermore, our study of live streaming use in China can contribute to the current body of social medial research from a cultural perspective, providing insights of how culture may influence the way people use live streaming. In addition, our study can offer practical implications for platforms to attract users based on individual needs and personality traits.

Live streaming
Social live streaming services (SLSSs) belong to the broad category of social network sites (SNSs), while featuring specific characteristics: synchrony, real-time broadcasting of user-generated content, interactions between the viewers and the streamers, and a gratification system (Scheibe et al., 2016). Through live streaming, ordinary people can create content relevant to their own interests and reach niche viewers who share those interests (Lu et al., 2019a). Users are not only consumers and data providers but also content producers as well as volunteers or aspiring professionals in the emerging labor market (Van Dijck, 2009). This creates a diversity of streamers and contents of live streaming, such as game, sport, news, and performance and celebrity shows and a “closer” relationship between streamers and viewers. The interaction between the streamers and the viewers is two-way. During a broadcast, streamers are in the focal point. They can directly acknowledge and respond verbally to viewers, while viewers often type in comments. Viewers can influence the broadcasts by sending virtual gifts to support streamers. Meanwhile, viewers can communicate with each other via comments or emojis. Therefore, often there is an interesting cross-model discourse during online streaming (Recktenwald, 2017). As such, the interactions—between the viewers and between the streamers and the viewer—provide a much lively social interaction experience.