Assessing binge-watching behaviors: Development and validation of the “Watching TV Series Motives” and “Binge-watching Engagement and Symptoms” questionnaires

Overcoming the unitary exploration of binge-watching: A cluster analytical approach

“…Table 1 describes the scales used and reports their internal reliability. TV series-watching motivations were evaluated with the French Watching TV Series Motives Questionnaire (WTSMQ; Flayelle, Canale, et al, 2019), a 22-item scale measuring four core motivational aspects related to TV series watching: social, emotional enhancement, enrichment, and coping/escapism. Items are scored on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 4 (to a great extent), with higher scores indicating higher motivational levels.…”

“…Items are scored on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 4 (to a great extent), with higher scores indicating higher motivational levels. The degree of binge-watching commitment and problematic binge-watching was also assessed using the French Binge-Watching Engagement and Symptoms Questionnaire (BWESQ; Flayelle, Canale, et al, 2019), a 40-item scale measuring engagement in binge-watching (i.e., engagement, positive emotions, desire/savoring, and pleasure preservation) and symptoms of problematic bingewatching (i.e., binge-watching, dependency, and loss of control). Items are scored on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree), with higher scores representing higher involvement in binge-watching and problematic binge-watching.…”

“…In addition to being simplistic, such an approach is likely to result in the overpathologization of common behaviors and to hamper both conceptualization and clinical interventions related to these problematic behaviors (Billieux, Schimmenti, et al, 2015;Kardefelt-Winther et al, 2017). To advance bingewatching research beyond these conceptual limitations, it is mandatory to distinguish between elevated (but safe) and problematic binge-watching (Flayelle, Canale, et al, 2019;Tóth-Király, Böthe, Tóth-Fáber, Gyözö, & Orosz, 2017), adopting a psychological processes-oriented approach which is liable to provide a more complete understanding of one's media use and media-related behaviors (Billieux, Philippot, et al, 2015;van Koningsbruggen, Hartmann, & Du, 2017).…”

The binge-watcher’s journey: Investigating motivations, contexts, and affective states surrounding Netflix viewing

“…However, it is generally defined as the selfdetermined consumption of multiple episodes of a serialized show consecutively. For instance, Netflix defined binge-watching as consuming two to six episodes of the same show in one sitting (Spangler, 2013), Ericsson Consumer Lab (2016) defined this behavior as watching at least two episodes of the same series or two consecutively, while scholars such as Flayelle et al (2019) defined binge-watching as viewing multiple episodes of the same TV series in one session, and Merikivi et al (2019: 6) as the 'consumption of more than one episode of the same serialized video content in a single sitting at one's own time and pace'. Although analyzing narrative components of serialized TV fiction is beyond the scope of this article, it is worth noting the effects that some features have on viewing behaviors, such as aesthetic qualities (Shim et al, 2017), the formulation of complex narratives (Mittell, 2015), and the inclusion of cliff-hangers (Steiner and Xu, 2018) that encourage continued watching.…”

“…Positive affect (PA) illustrates 'the extent to which a person feels enthusiastic, active, and alert' while negative affect (NA) reflects the 'subjective distress and unpleasurable engagement' related to aversive affective states (Watson et al, 1988(Watson et al, : 1063. Scholars have used PANAS to explore whether watching emotionally arousing films increases pain thresholds and group bonding (Dunbar et al, 2016), to study the release of hormones by TV soccer spectators (van der Meij et al, 2012), and to analyze the relationship between serialized TV fiction watching and binge-watching (Flayelle et al, 2019). The SAM (Bradley and Lang, 1994) is a pictorial scale that assesses participants' arousal, valence, and dominance, where participants identify the manikin representing their current state for each dimension.…”