A Study Of The Factors Influencing Gifting Behavior On Live Streaming Platforms Based On Virtual Badges And User Interaction Perspectives

Live streaming is becoming increasingly popular worldwide,with users paying to give virtual gifts being a major source of revenue for live streaming platforms and hosts.However,research shows that 97% of gift spending is contributed by only 20% of users.It is therefore important to understand the factors that influence users to give virtual gifts.Previous research on virtual gift consumption behavior in live streaming platforms,on the other hand,has mostly been based on a consumer behavior perspective,focusing on factors such as product characteristics and anchor characteristics and researching users’ consumption intentions through questionnaires.This has neglected the influence of environmental factors that shape user interactions in live broadcast rooms and also made it difficult to accurately restore users’ real consumption decisions.Therefore,it is of some significance to study how virtual badges and user interaction behavior influence users to give virtual gifts on live streaming platforms.This paper investigates the factors influencing the consumption of virtual gifts on live streaming platforms based on self-determination theory and social interaction theory combined with virtual badges and user interactions.Firstly,this paper introduces self-determination theory and social interaction theory to explain how virtual badges and user interactions affect users’ virtual gift consumption behavior on live streaming platforms and to build a research model.After that,specific research hypotheses are proposed from the perspectives of virtual badges and user interactions,respectively,based on relevant theories and previous studies.Secondly,a crawler is constructed according to the model’s needs to collect the required data from the Douyu live streaming platform,perform data cleaning and pre-processing,and further process the danmaku data for word separation,vectorization,and sentiment calculation,and then construct the relevant research variables according to the subsequent research needs.Finally,regression models were built,and analyses such as descriptive statistical analysis,correlation analysis,regression analysis,and robustness testing were carried out to validate the hypotheses and draw conclusions from the study.Both noble badges and fan badges can motivate users’ virtual gift consumption behavior,and the higher the badge level,the stronger the motivation effect;there is a positive spillover effect of high-ranking fan badges on low-ranking fan badges;the number of danmaku and the values of gifts given by other users can motivate users to give virtual gifts;positive sentiment of danmaku has no significant effect on users’ gifting,but negative sentiment has a significant positive effect.The factors that influence users’ gifting on live streaming platforms are clarified,and corresponding management implications are proposed for operators and anchors of live streaming platforms.