Emotional Synchrony and Viewers’ Consumption: Evidence from Live Streaming of Virtual Idols

Menghan Duan, Yueyue Zhang, Qi Zhang, Cheng Zhang

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Live streaming has become increasingly popular in recent years for users to broadcast live events or experiences to an online audience in real-time. With the prevalence of the metaverse, virtual idols appear on the stage of live streaming. Unlike real human streamers, virtual idols are computer-generated avatars whose appearance does not exist in the physical world. Though existing literature has documented the effect of emotional displays of human streamers on viewers’ behavior, whether emotional displays of avatar streamers affect viewers’ behavior, especially viewers’ consumption behavior has not yet been explored. To fill this gap, we focus on the live streaming of virtual idols and conduct deep learning approaches to investigate the emotional synchrony between avatar streamers and their viewers based on moment-to-moment data. Our analysis of large-scale video data shows that the larger the discrepancy between the streamers’ acoustic- and text- emotions, the more likely the viewers will pay. This study sheds light on how avatars can be designed to leverage emotion to engage viewers in more consumption.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationInternational Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2023
Subtitle of host publication"Rising like a Phoenix: Emerging from the Pandemic and Reshaping Human Endeavors with Digital Technologies"
PublisherAssociation for Information Systems
ISBN (Electronic)9781713893622
Publication statusPublished - 2023
Event44th International Conference on Information Systems: Rising like a Phoenix: Emerging from the Pandemic and Reshaping Human Endeavors with Digital Technologies, ICIS 2023 - Hyderibad, India
Duration: 10 Dec 202313 Dec 2023

Publication series

NameInternational Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2023: "Rising like a Phoenix: Emerging from the Pandemic and Reshaping Human Endeavors with Digital Technologies"

Conference

Conference44th International Conference on Information Systems: Rising like a Phoenix: Emerging from the Pandemic and Reshaping Human Endeavors with Digital Technologies, ICIS 2023
Country/TerritoryIndia
CityHyderibad
Period10/12/2313/12/23

Keywords

  • Emotional synchrony
  • Live streaming
  • Moment-to-moment data
  • Video mining
  • Virtual idol

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Science Applications
  • Information Systems

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Cite this

Duan, M., Zhang, Y., Zhang, Q., & Zhang, C. (2023). Emotional Synchrony and Viewers’ Consumption: Evidence from Live Streaming of Virtual Idols. In International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2023: "Rising like a Phoenix: Emerging from the Pandemic and Reshaping Human Endeavors with Digital Technologies" (International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2023: "Rising like a Phoenix: Emerging from the Pandemic and Reshaping Human Endeavors with Digital Technologies"). Association for Information Systems.