Virtual interactions and sports viewing on social live streaming platforms: The role of co-creation experiences, platform involvement, and follow status

Abstract

This study deciphers the underlying mechanism by which virtual interactions influence sports viewing on a social live streaming (SLS) platform. Survey data was collected from 741 viewers who watched Thursday Night Football (TNF) co-streaming on Twitch and was subsequently analyzed via Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). We identified distinct effects of virtual interactions on co-creation experiences and platform involvement, which served as serial mediators, and in turn, engendered intentions to watch TNF co-streaming. Viewers’ follow status was found to moderate the impacts of co-creation experiences and platform involvement on watching intentions. Our study explores the interconnections between service dominant (S-D) logic and social identity theory (SIT), expounding how virtual interactions may impact sports viewing in the SLS service ecosystem. The findings shed light on the means of fostering an interactive environment conducive to co-creating meaningful experiences and developing lasting relationships in synchronous social media.