Users’ Emotional Difference And Tipping In Live Streaming

As a new social platform,live streaming has shown a trend of blowout development in recent years,and has attracted a large number of broadcasters and users to participate in the ranks of live streaming.A new function in the live streaming is to send text(namely,danmaku),and users can send real-time danmaku to interact with broadcaster or other users in real time to express their feelings or emotions.In addition,giving paid-gifts(i.e.,tipping)is also a feature of the live streaming,which is also an important way for the live streaming platforms and broadcasters to obtain profit.At present,most scholars’ research on live streaming is based on the motivations of users’ participation in live streaming,and most of the literature is qualitative or based on questionnaire survey,and there is a lack of research based on objective data.This paper obtained the objective data of users and broadcasters at the minute level from a Chinese live streaming platform,and focused on the danmaku content sent by users.These comments(positive comments and negative comments)can reflect the real-time emotions of users to some extent.In view of the fact that the tipping function in the live streaming has the feature of single amount of paid-gifts varies widely,this paper tries to study the users’ tipping behavior more comprehensively by focusing on the two variables(the number of paid-gifts and the amount of paid-gifts).Specifically,this paper hypothesizes that the higher the emotional difference among users produced by their social interactions,that is to say,the number of users with positive emotions is relatively reduced,which may weaken the whole level of empathy of users and thus reduce the number of users’ paid-gifts.However,based on the Consumer Competition Arousal Theory,this paper hypothesizes that this emotional difference may stimulate the level of consumer competition arousal among a small number of users,and thus promote the behavior of large paid-gifts and it may increase the total amount of paid-gifts.At the same time,this paper also hypothesizes that the broadcaster’s emotion could affect the relationship between users’ emotional difference and users’ tipping behavior,i.e.,broadcaster’s emotion positively moderates the relationship between users’ emotional difference and the number of paid-gifts,and also positively moderates the relationship between users’ emotional difference and the amount of paid-gifts.Through the empirical study on the collected data of 24,977 minutes of live streaming clips from 694 live streaming sessions,it is found that the users’ emotional difference has a negative impact on the number of paid-gifts and has a positive impact on the amount of paid-gifts,and.In addition,the broadcasters’ emotion has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between the users’ emotional difference and the number of paid-gifts,but has no significant moderating effect on the users’ emotional difference and the amount of paid-gifts.Based on the Empathy Theory and the Consumer Competitive Arousal Theory,this paper studied the relationship between the emotional difference generated by the social interaction among users in the live streaming and users’ tipping,which extends and extends the research in the field related to live streaming and has contributed to theories on social media,gift-giving behavior,and empathy.In addition,this paper also explained the moderating effect of the broadcaster’s emotion on the relationship between users’ emotional difference and user’s tipping.These findings have an important marketing implication for marketers of live streaming platforms in product promotion and sales,as well as the profit model of live streaming platforms.For example,live streaming platforms should respect the differentiation of live streaming’s types,and actively encourage the development of broadcasters’ personalization and niche culture,because the public evaluation brought by the controversy may not be positive,but the existence of users called “true love fans” has an positive impact on the platform’s profit.And broadcasters should strengthen their own emotional management level,even in the face of controversial topics to maintain a positive mood,so that it is possible to promote users’ tipping behavior.