Purchasing social attention by tipping: Materialism predicts online tipping in live‐streaming platform through self‐enhancement motive

Abstract

Online tipping, or virtual gift-giving, on live-streaming platforms is an increasingly common consumer behavior in cyberspace. Perplexingly, when live-stream viewership itself is free, viewers voluntarily spend money to buy virtual gifts and send them to their preferred streamers. The present study aimed to examine the motivational mechanism underlying these voluntary tipping behaviors from the perspectives of materialism and self-enhancement. By a representative online survey (N = 1224), we found that participants' materialist beliefs were positively associated with both the likelihood and the amount of online tipping, and the self-enhancement motive could significantly mediate this association; furthermore, streamer endorsement could moderate the link between the self-enhancement motive and tipping amount. These findings suggest that materialist beliefs and downstream self-related motivations are among the main driving forces for online tipping. The present results extended previous research on materialism by testing its effects in a newly emerging online consumer behavior and providing direct evidence for the moderation role of the "symbolic-ness" of materialist behaviors. Practical implications for live-streaming platforms, educators and policymakers, such as introducing tipping amount caps, were also discussed.

Optimal platform sales mode in live streaming commerce supply chains

“…Wongkitrungrueng et al [36] analyze the data of Facebook from the perspective of streamers. Besides, Wu et al [37] figure out the mechanism of consumer gift-giving when they can watch live streaming for free via the online survey. Lu et al [17] add audiences externally to observe the relationship between audience size and tips, finding out a positive correlation between audience size and average tips.…”

The dark and bright side of online consumer behavior

“…Next, “ Purchasing Social Attention by Tipping: Materialism Predicts Online Tipping on Live‐Streaming Platform through Self‐Enhancement Motive ” by Wu et al (2022) intends to investigate the motivational mechanism underlying voluntary tipping behaviors from the perspectives of materialism and self‐enhancement. The study findings extended previous research on materialism by testing its effects in a newly emerging online consumer behavior and providing direct evidence for the moderation role of the “symbolic‐ness” of materialist behaviors.…”

“…Leading on this theme, an article byMoisescu et al (2022) "An examination of personality traits as predictors of electronic word of mouth diffusion in social networking sites" aims to explore the impact of social networking sites users' materialism, narcissism, self-esteem, and extraversion on electronic word of mouth diffusion, both directly and indirectly, mediated by referral visit behavior and knowledge-based validation. The research provides useful insights for online marketers concerning improving the segmentation and targeting tools offered to online marketers.Next, "Purchasing Social Attention by Tipping: Materialism Predicts Online Tipping on Live-Streaming Platform through Self-EnhancementMotive" byWu et al (2022) intends to investigate the motivational mechanism underlying voluntary tipping behaviors from the perspectives of materialism and self-enhancement. The study findings extended previous research on materialism by testing its effects in a newly emerging online consumer behavior and providing direct evidence for the moderation role of the "symbolic-ness" of materialist behaviors.…”

The moderating effect of appearance on the impact of performance rankings in the live streaming market

“…The prospects for the live streaming industry have attracted the interest of researchers, and because the broadcaster and viewers are the central elements of a live stream, a growing number of studies have focused on the behavior and characteristics of the participants (Wongkitrungrueng et al, 2020;Li et al, 2021;Lin et al, 2021;Liu and Liu, 2021;Chen and Liao, 2022;Guan et al, 2022;Wu et al, 2022;Xu et al, 2022). In this study, we examine the effects of relative performance information (RPI) on live streaming performance, which is measured by the gifting amount (i.e., viewer tips) that a broadcaster receives on a given day (Chen and Xiong, 2019;Zhou et al, 2019;Lin et al, 2021).…”

“…One type of interaction is non-monetary in nature, such as texting with the broadcaster or other viewers, and sending “likes” to the broadcaster ( Zhou et al, 2019 ; Lin et al, 2021 ). The other type of interaction is tipping, whereby viewers give the broadcaster virtual tokens or gifts that they have purchased from the platform using real money ( Lin et al, 2021 ; Guan et al, 2022 ; Wu et al, 2022 ). Viewers can decide when and how much to tip the broadcaster at any time during a live stream, and often engage in both monetary and non-monetary interactions multiple times while watching a live stream ( Lin et al, 2021 ).…”