What Motives Users to Participate in Danmu on Live Streaming Platforms? The Impact of Technical Environment and Effectance

Abstract

Danmu function as an augmented comment feature has been adopted by almost all live streaming platforms to foster interaction between viewers and the streamer in China. However, few studies have been conducted to understand the determinants of users’ Danmu sending behavior on live streaming platforms. This study examines this phenomenon from the lens of effectance theory and the S-O-R framework. We propose that two effectances – Danmu effectance and live streaming effectance – play an essential role in active Danmu participation. In addition, we explore the effects of time-enhanced (synchronicity) and space-enhanced technical characteristic (visibility) of Danmu on live streaming platforms on two effectances. Data analysis of 877 participations from Douyu platform in mainland China indicates that active Danmu participation is positively associated with Danmu effectance and live streaming effectance which are influenced by both time-enhanced technical feature (synchronicity) and space-enhanced technical feature (visibility). In addition, the study finds that demographic characteristics, namely education and income, also affect active Danmu participation.

Not Very Effective: Validity Issues of the Effectance in Games Scale

“…In other words, the effectance scale may measure more than one separable aspect of player experience, and also cannot be adequately differentiated from other related, but theoretically distinct, constructs. Consequently, previous research using this measure should be interpreted with caution [4,8,19,30,32,33,38,41,44,45].…”

“…Games researchers have since used the scale to assess self-efficacy in games [41], player agency when engaging with game AI [8], interactivity in VR games [38], and have adapted it to measure effectance experiences of live-streaming audiences when directly or indirectly impacting on-stream content [4,45]. The scale has found particular application among games researchers studying interactive digital narratives (IDN), where Klimmt and colleagues [21] posited effectance as a key mediator between antecedent features (like usability and believability) and consequent experiences (like curiosity, suspense, or surprise; see also [31]).…”

A Magic “Bullet”: Exploring Sport Fan Usage of On-Screen, Ephemeral Posts During Live Stream Sessions

“…Bullet screen is seen as user-generated comments displayed on the top of the video moving from the right to left on the video screen and synchronized with the timeline of the video (Fan et al, 2018; Wang et al, 2019). Fan et al (2018) classified the characteristics of bullet-screen videos as pseudo-synchronicity; perceived proximity, and comment-content congruency.…”

“…The increasing popularity of the bullet-screen phenomenon has also caught scholars' attention. Previous literature has examined the influence of bullet screen's proximity on users' perspectives toward video quality experience and online engagement (Fan et al, 2018), users' impolite behaviors while using bullet screen (Wang, 2020), and their motivation for participating in bullet-screen discussions (Wang et al, 2019). Scholars have also explored how the bullet screen has been used for studying languages (Zhang & Cassany, 2019), watching movies (Sun, et al, 2018), and reality shows (Hao et al, 2019).…”

The Role of Group Interaction in Danmu Comments for Live E-Commerce

“…If the characteristics of Danmu group interactions can be discovered from thousands of Danmu texts, it will effectively provide a deeper understanding of Danmu group interactions and the consumer behaviour mechanism in live e-commerce. In contrast, current level of analysis of interaction stays at a simple count of the number of Danmu texts [15]. With this gap in mind, the aim of this study is to investigate the role of Danmu group interactions in live e-commerce.…”