Factors Influencing Viewing Behavior in Live Streaming: An Interview-Based Survey of Music Fans

Abstract

V Live is a live-streaming service made by South Korean IT company in August 2015. The service provides diverse video contents specific to entertainment content. Most of V Live users are K-pop fans, and they actively express emotions on V Live content by writing comments, pressing “hearts”, and sharing video content. Based on Uses and Gratifications theory, this study investigated why people use live streaming service, and the factors influencing users’ viewing behavior in live streaming. We conducted an in-depth interview with V Live users. Based on the results of the interview, an online survey was conducted. As a result, six factors—“Interpersonal relationship motivation”, “Social presence motivation”, “Celebrity support motivation”, “Celebrity presence motivation”, “Social interaction motivation”, and “Differentiation motivation”—were derived as motivations to use V Live. While “Social presence motivation” and “Differentiation motivation” among V Live use motivations that have been shown to mediate the relationship between fans’ fanship and V Live viewing time, all motivations using V Live have been shown to mediate the relationship between fans’ fanship and V Live viewing participation.

Keywords

• fanship
• V Live
• live streaming service
• participation