4. Digital Content Contribution and Consumption in Live Streaming

This chapter provides an overview of the live streaming industry, highlighting its three primary stakeholders: broadcasters, viewers, and platforms. The chapter introduces the industry and its context, emphasizing the unique aspects of live streaming that make it an intriguing subject for studying digital contribution and consumption behavior. The empirical analyses in this chapter focus on the economics of live streaming and address several key questions. Through a review of relevant literature and data analysis from a popular Chinese live streaming platform, the chapter investigates factors influencing broadcasters’ receipt of gifts and viewers’ motivations to send them. It also explores the impact of gifting on churn rates for both broadcasters and viewers, as well as the correlation between economic, geographic factors, and the growth of the live streaming industry. The findings offer valuable insights into the economics of live streaming in China and pose further research questions. The subsequent parts of the book build upon live streaming as an empirical context, delving deeper into social incentives, motivations, and dynamics of digital content contribution and consumption behavior, including their social aspects.