The Relationship Between Parasocial Relationships And Consumption Behavior Of Female-oriented Romance Game Players

Parasocial relationships are one-sided virtual relationships that people establish with media characters(e.g.,show characters,news anchors,talk show hosts,and celebrities)similar to real-life interpersonal relationships.This study selects female-oriented romance game players to examine the relationship between the parasocial relationships that they establish in the game and their game consumption behavior.The study explore the mechanism of the role of the parasocial relationship on players’ online game consumption behavior.A total of 8 interview records and 277 valid questionnaires were returned in the form of semi-structured interviews with players and randomly distributed questionnaires on the Internet to explore the relationship between parasocial relationships and online game consumption behaviors.Based on previous studies,this study proposes the hypothesis of the influence of parasocial relationships on the consumption behavior of online games,and constructs the model hypothesis of the mediating role of video game transfer and role identity.This study uses an interpretative phenomenological approach to analyze the interview records to initially verify some of the hypotheses;it also uses statistical software to test the reliability and validity of each questionnaire data and correlation analysis,as well as to verify the mediating model hypothesis.Thenit discusses the results of the analysis and proposes corresponding development and improvement suggestions for game design companies in the market,and finally presents the limitations and shortcomings of this study and looks forward to future research directions.The research results of this study are as follows.The findings of this study are as follows:(1)The analysis of the interview content shows that the respondents have a high level of parasocial relationship with male characters in the game,and the parasocial relationship with them positively affects the level of video game transfer and role identity,and they are more willing to spend money for male characters in the game.(2)The results of questionnaire data analysis show that parasocial relationship have a significant positive relationship with role identity,video game transfer and online game consumption behavior,and video game transfer has a significant positive relationship with online game consumption behavior.(3)Parasocial relationship positively affects online game consumption behavior through the mediating role of video game transfer.The results of this study not only expand the research scope of media role of parasocial relationship,but also enrich the field of game consumption,and gi ve some suggestions to game companies.