Purpose

The boom in live streaming has intensified competition among streamers for viewers' gifts, which makes it meaningful to study the factors that affect the viewers’ gifting behavior. Given the emotional attachment between streamers and viewers, the authors set out to elucidate a new driver on viewer gifting: expressions of the streamer. This research aims to explore the impact of streamer emotions on the viewer gifting behaviors, including free and paid gifting. The loyalty level of the viewers is also introduced as a moderating factor to investigate the heterogeneous effect of streamer emotions on gifting behavior.

Design/methodology/approach

The dataset the authors collected consists of two parts, including 1809.69 h of live streaming videos and 358,002 gift giving records. Combined with deep learning methods and regression analysis, the authors performed empirical tests on the 81,110 valid samples. Several robustness checks were also conducted to ensure the reliability of main results.

Findings

The empirical results show that streamer emotions do have effects on viewers' free and paid gifting behavior. The authors’ findings show that positive streamer expressions, such as happiness and surprise, have a positive influence on viewer gifting behavior. However, some negative expressions, like sadness, can also have a positive impact. Moreover, the authors discovered that higher viewer loyalty amplifies the positive effect of streamer emotions and reduces the negative effect.

Originality/value

This research contributes to the study about streamer emotions and viewers' consumption behavior, which extends the application of emotion as social information model (EASI model) in the live streaming setting. The authors carefully divide the gifting behavior into two types: free and paid, and study how these two types are affected by streamer emotions. Besides, these effects are analyzed within viewers of different loyalty levels. This study offers practical emotion management strategies for streamers and live streaming platforms to gain more economic profits.

中文翻译：

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主播情绪对观众送礼行为的影响：来自娱乐直播的证据

目的

直播的兴起加剧了主播之间对观众送礼的竞争，这使得研究影响观众送礼行为的因素变得有意义。考虑到主播和观众之间的情感依恋，作者着手阐明观众赠送礼物的新驱动因素：主播的表情。本研究旨在探讨主播情绪对观众赠送礼物行为（包括免费和付费礼物）的影响。观众的忠诚度也被引入作为调节因素，以研究主播情绪对礼物行为的异质影响。

设计/方法论/途径

作者收集的数据集由两部分组成，包括 1809.69 小时的直播视频和 358,002 条送礼记录。作者结合深度学习方法和回归分析，对81110个有效样本进行了实证检验。还进行了多项稳健性检查，以确保主要结果的可靠性。

发现

实证结果表明，主播情绪确实对观众的免费和付费礼物行为有影响。作者的研究结果表明，积极的主播表达方式，例如快乐和惊喜，对观众的礼物行为有积极的影响。然而，一些消极的表达方式，比如悲伤，也可以产生积极的影响。此外，作者发现，较高的观众忠诚度会放大主播情绪的积极影响并减少负面影响。

原创性/价值

本研究有助于研究主播情绪和观众的消费行为，扩展了情绪作为社交信息模型（EASI模型）在直播环境中的应用。作者仔细地将送礼行为分为两种类型：免费和付费，并研究了这两种类型如何受到主播情绪的影响。此外，这些影响是在不同忠诚度水平的观众中进行分析的。本研究为主播和直播平台提供实用的情绪管理策略，以获得更多的经济利润。