With the recent development of the economy and digital technology, people's leisure lives have changed in various ways. In particular, due to COVID-19, the share of consumption of digital media contents such as video games has increased compared to ...
With the recent development of the economy and digital technology, people's leisure lives have changed in various ways. In particular, due to COVID-19, the share of consumption of digital media contents such as video games has increased compared to before COVID-19, and Chinese e-sports are also showing rapid growth. In addition, the size of China's e-sports broadcasting market is rapidly developing, and the profits of real-time live platforms have risen sharply. A new viewing behavior called e-sports social viewing emerged against this background. This study targeted social viewing, which combines e-sports games with online conversations through chat windows such as SNS, community, and bullet comment, and examined the effect of social viewing motivation on usage satisfaction and continuous use intention based on the use and satisfaction theory. In addition, focusing on social viewing reflecting the interaction between viewers, is explored whether social reality can be mediated in the relationship between viewers' motivation to use, satisfaction with use, and intention to continue using. Therefore, this study conducted an online survey of 467 viewers with experience in e-sports social viewing online. In addition, this study was analyzed with SPSS 24.0 and AMOS 24.0 programs, and the effect of the model's fit and variables was verified through a structural equation model, and bootstrapping was performed to confirm the significance of the mediating effect. The research results of this study are as follows.
First, in terms of social viewing motivation factors, it was found that the support, entertainment pursuit, viewing experience share and opinion exchange between players and their team had a positive effect on content satisfaction and interaction satisfaction, but information pursuit did not have a significant effect on those satisfaction.
Second, it was found that the motivation to support players and clubs and share opinions played an active role on the intention to continue using, and the motivation to pursue information and entertainment, and share viewing experience did not have a significant effect on it.
Third, it was confirmed that the support, pursuit of entertainment, shared viewing experience and exchange of opinions between social viewing motives from players to their team had positive results on social reality. But information needs did not have a significant effect on social presence. However, social presence is active to use satisfaction and continuance usage intention.
Fourth, it was confirmed that if content satisfaction among social viewing satisfaction can have a positive effect on continuous use intention. Interaction satisfaction did not have a significant effect on continuous use intention.
Finally, it was confirmed that a sense of social reality had a positive effect on satisfaction with use and intention to continue using. In addition, as a result of verifying the mediating effect of social reality, social reality was mediated between other social viewing motives, satisfaction with use, and continuous use intention, excluding information pursuit motivation.
Therefore, this study examined the social viewing motivation of Chinese e-sports viewers and specifically identified the effects of players and team support, information pursuit, entertainment pursuit, viewing experience sharing, and opinion exchange on usage satisfaction and continuous use intention, respectively. In addition, it is meaningful to reveal the mediating effect of social reality in the relationship between social viewing motivation and satisfaction with use, and social viewing motivation and intention to continue using.