earticle

영어

Unlike traditional media, livestreaming fosters a dynamic and bidirectional communication environment where audiences actively participate through chats and donations, while creators respond in real time. This study examines how creators’ interaction efforts— specifically, emotional homophily and responsiveness—influence multi-tiered viewer engagement in the livestreaming context. Based on the key tenets of Parasocial Relationship theory and Network Social Presence theory, we conceptualize engagement through three relational pathways: streamer-to-viewer, viewer-to-streamer, and viewer-to-viewer. Using data from 948 livestreams by 108 creators in YouTube, we quantify interaction efforts using sentiment analysis and text mining of creator subtitles and live chat logs. Viewer engagement is categorized into low (viewing), moderate (chatting), and high (donating) tiers. Our analysis indicates that responsiveness significantly impacts moderate and high engagement, while emotional homophily strongly drives high-tier engagement through donations. Notably, creator popularity, by reinforcing perceived network social presence, moderates particularly amplifying the influence of responsiveness in larger audiences. This study contributes theoretically by disentangling the impacts of distinct interaction strategies on specific viewer behaviors, validating a tiered engagement unique to livestreaming, and identifying audience size as a key moderator. Practically, the findings offer guidance for content creators and platform designers to enhance engagement by tailoring interaction strategies and tools according to audience dynamics.