Consumer Use of Social Live Streaming Services: the Influence of Co-Experience and effectance on enjoyment

Social live streaming services (SLSS) have emerged as a new type of hedonic social media. SLSS allow users to watch and broadcast video streams in real-time, fostering sociability through synchronous communication via chat channels. While the extant literature has mostly examined producers’ use of SLSS, the consumer perspective has been underexplored. Prior research has identified perceived enjoyment as consumers’ primary motivation to use hedonic social media. However, it remains unclear how the specific affordances of SLSS affect consumers’ enjoyment. Due to their synchronous nature, SLSS enable consumers to co-experience live streams together and to perceive so-called “effectance” by shaping the content of live streams through their actions. Consequently, research is required on how both co-experience and effectance influence consumers’ enjoyment of SLSS. We empirically address this research gap by applying partial least squares equation modeling on web survey data of 127 consumers of SLSS. Our results show that consumers’ perceived co-experience has a strong positive effect on the enjoyment of their active behavior (chatting) and their passive behavior (watching). Perceived effectance, however, only shows a positive impact on the enjoyment of active behavior, while playing no role for the enjoyment of passive behavior.