The Impact Of Identification On Virtual Gifts Consumption: An Empirical Study In The Context Of Live Streaming

Social Live Streaming Services(SLSS)is a new form of social media,which is popular worldwide for its real-time interaction and successful commercial model.However,a previous study found that 20% viewers contributed 97% of all gifts,which means most gifts are sent by a small number of viewers.Therefore,it is important to understand the mechanism of viewer's consumption on SLSS.Yet previous studies mainly explored the virtual gifts consumption from a perspective of the Consumption Value Theory,which focus only with values of commodities while neglected the identity characteristics of consumers.On the other hand,studies on virtual consumption within live streaming platforms are still insufficient.In this case,from an integrative perspective of social identification and identity signaling process,this research studies how consumers' identification for social status and identification for the broadcaster would impact their different virtual consumption behaviors.Based on social influence theory,this study also explores mechanism of comment system and further examines the moderating role of social density.The theoretical framework is tested using the linear regression model based on 232,416 objective data collected on Douyu.tv platform in China.The result shows that one's identification for social status will positively influence his or her consuming amount of paid gifts,while negatively influence one's consuming number of free gifts;and one's identification for relationship with a broadcaster will positively influence his or her consuming number of free gifts,while has no significant effects on paid gifts.Moreover,the moderating effect of social density is significant and has positive influences on both of the main effects on two types of identifications.The study contributes to revealing different effects of different identification on two types of gift-giving behaviors.It also highlights the importance of social density in moderating the effects,which not only provides a novel theoretical perspective to study the virtual consumption behavior,but also provides valuable suggestions on how to promote sales of virtual gifts on SLSS.