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You Watch, You Give, and You Engage: A Study of Live Streaming Practices in China
Zhicong Lu, Haijun Xia, Seongkook Heo, Daniel Wigdor
TL;DR
Research on live streaming has largely focused on North America and Europe, leaving Chinese practices and engagement factors less understood. This study examines Chinese users’ viewing, broadcasting, and social experiences, finding that pleasure, socializing, companionship, and stranger interaction are central motivations while users seek deeper interaction mechanisms.
Problem
Research has mainly examined North American and European live streaming, leaving Chinese content, interaction practices, and engagement factors comparatively underexplored.
Method
The study used a mixed-methods approach combining an online survey of live streaming users with interviews examining viewing, broadcasting, motivations, and engagement.
Results
Chinese users engaged with live streaming for pleasure, socializing, companionship, and befriending strangers, while politics and civic content were rare.
Takeaways & Limitations
The findings support designing live streaming platforms with deeper, richer interaction mechanisms beyond commenting, gifting, and fan groups.
Takeaways & Limitations
Gifting systems may discourage viewers from paying when expensive gifts raise expectations without proportionally increasing benefits.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
Despite gaining traction in North America, live streaming has not reached the popularity it has in China, where livestreaming has a tremendous impact on the social behaviors of users. To better understand this socio-technological phenomenon, we conducted a mixed methods study of live streaming practices in China. We present the results of an online survey of 527 live streaming users, focusing on their broadcasting or viewing practices and the experiences they find most engaging. We also interviewed 14 active users to explore their motivations and experiences. Our data revealed the different categories of content that was broadcasted and how varying aspects of this content engaged viewers. We also gained insight into the role reward systems and fan group-chat play in engaging users, while also finding evidence that both viewers and streamers desire deeper channels and mechanisms for interaction in addition to the commenting, gifting, and fan groups that are available today.
INTRODUCTION
Live streaming has become an almost ubiquitous practice in China, motivating this mixed methods study of users’ engagement, rewards, and social interactions. The study synthesizes survey and interview findings to identify opportunities and challenges for future social live streaming platforms and services.
- Motivation: Unlike prior research largely focused on North American usage, this study examines live streaming in China, where usage is almost ubiquitous.North American live streaming had only recently begun entering mainstream culture through Facebook Live, YouTube Live, and Periscope.
- Motivation: China had more than 200 million viewers watching streamers nightly across more than 200 live streaming platforms, creating an estimated 5-billion-dollar industry in 2017.Chinese live streams also differ greatly in content, style, and form from those in North America and Europe.
- Method: The researchers conducted a mixed methods exploration using an online survey of 527 regular users and interviews with 14 regular users in China.The survey examined motivations for engaging with live streams and streamers, viewers’ rewards, and other experiences.
- Contribution: Reward-based systems and fan groups on instant messaging apps afford social interaction between viewers and streamers and facilitate community building.The study presents these findings as part of an overview of opportunities and challenges for designing future social live streaming platforms and services.
BACKGROUND AND RELATED WORK
Prior research examined live streaming across China, YouTube, gaming, and general-use contexts, but Chinese live streaming remained comparatively underexplored despite its large and professionalized user base. Existing studies covered demographics, motivations, communities, and engagement, motivating broader research beyond gaming-focused communities.
- Live Streaming in China: As of April 2017, China had more than 200 live streaming platforms and 324 million live streaming users.The top 9 popular platforms each had over 2 million daily active users.
- YouTube and Vloggers: YouTube research examined vloggers’ self-awareness and context collapse, while comments concentrated on a small portion of the most popular videos.YouTube also provides a path to fame through sharing life and experiences.
- Video Game Live Streaming (on Twitch.tv): Gaming live-streaming research found that communities form around shared identities and experiences, and that stream archetypal structure can matter more than game genre for viewer gratification.Other work linked time spent watching with money spent on the platform.
- General Live Streaming: General live-streaming studies examined mobile-app limitations, civic content, adolescent-focused use, and teens’ long-form-selfie practices for engaging small friend groups.Early mobile streams faced difficulty finding appropriate topics and poor image quality; 11% of videos had civic importance.
- Research Gap: Existing research focused mainly on North America and Europe, leaving Chinese live-streaming practices comparatively understudied despite more daily active users and more professional and regular streamers.Prior work by Zhou examined Chinese users’ demographics, usage, and perceptions, but the passage indicates that broader practice research remained limited.
METHODS
The study used a mixed-methods design combining a Chinese online survey with follow-up semistructured interviews to examine live-streaming practices, motivations, interactions, rewards, and engagement. Survey responses and interview transcripts were analyzed through qualitative coding, affinity diagramming, and factor analysis.
- Survey: The online questionnaire combined closed-ended questions about viewing and streaming practices with open-ended stories about respondents’ most engaging, creative, or enjoyable streams.Respondents also described desired interactions or features for current live-streaming platforms.
- Recruitment and sample: 902 completed surveys were collected over two weeks in July 2017, and 375 responses were removed during manual and automated data cleaning, leaving 527 responses.Exclusions included non-users, failed trap questions, rapid completion, patterned responses, and fake or gibberish text.
- Interviews: 14 survey participants were interviewed remotely by video call during August 2017 in semistructured interviews lasting about 50 minutes.Participants received a 50 CNY honorarium.
- Analysis: Open-ended survey responses were open-coded, translated into English, and grouped into emerging themes through team discussion and affinity diagramming.Two native Chinese authors first coded 10% of responses and reached consensus before coding continued.
- Analysis: Factor analysis clustered engagement questions using principal component decomposition followed by varimax orthogonal rotation.The analysis sought significant differences in patterns across the engagement data.
RESULTS
The results show that Chinese live-streaming users watched regularly for relaxation, social connection, and knowledge, while favoring conversational, performance, educational, and gaming content. Engagement was associated with live interaction, meaningful personal topics, entertaining knowledge sharing, and opportunities to interact with streamers and other viewers.
- Viewing Practices: Users watched live streams regularly, averaging 62.0 minutes per stream and 7.2 hours per week.The average single-stream duration was 62.0 minutes (SD=33.6), and weekly viewing averaged 7.2 hours (SD=5.0).
- Motivations: 69% watched live streams to relax, while 55% were attracted by particular streamers; other motivations included socializing, community, self-expression, and learning.Interviewees additionally described seeking comfort and company when lonely, or experiences outside their ordinary social lives.
- Activities and Topics: Conversational streams were popular, with 131 responses, including 68 about non-celebrity streamers sharing real-life stories or personal experiences.Serious topics included work and family pressure, work-life balance, careers, relationships, marriage, parenting, and supporting parents.
- Performance: Amateur or semi-professional performances drew 125 responses, especially singing with 85 responses, and viewers valued their live, unedited, improvisational interaction.Viewers could request songs, receive real-time responses, hear related stories, and comment with performers and other viewers.
DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR DESIGN
The discussion links Chinese live streaming to pleasure, socializing, companionship, and community formation, while identifying cultural and regulatory differences and design opportunities for richer interaction, non-entertainment uses, and social good.
- Discussion: Politics and civic content are rare in Chinese streams, possibly because censorship discourages people from placing themselves in difficult situations.Current-affairs banter is described as attention-seeking rather than civic information, and the authors conjecture that censorship is one reason for its scarcity.
- Discussion: Interviewees reported little negative content, while streamers, moderators, and platform regulators blocked trolls or removed inappropriate material.Participants viewed regulation and censorship positively because they reduced undesirable or negative content.
- Discussion: Users sought pleasure, socializing, trust, and companionship, and some added previously unknown streamers or viewers as QQ or WeChat contacts.These motivations align with the Chinese “renao” principle of achieving a harmonious social ambience.
- Discussion: Some participants preferred popular stranger streamers over friends’ everyday-life streams, although they still wanted to support and trust their friends.This contrasts with prior findings that viewers interact more on friends’ live streams than strangers’ streams.
- Discussion: Fan groups function as private, closed third places alongside open, public live streams, supporting community communication beyond the stream’s ephemeral chat.The discussion connects virtual gifts and fan groups with multimodal community building and the cultural importance of guanxi.
- Implications for Design: Design should support deeper, richer, and less intrusive interaction, adapt live streaming for e-commerce and education, and use it to broaden cultural awareness and older-adult engagement.Suggested interaction possibilities include applauding, remotely hugging, or sensing streamed objects; non-entertainment applications must preserve community, reward, and authenticity.
CONCLUSION
The study empirically examined live streaming practices in China, focusing on motivations, practices, social interactions beyond streams, and engagement factors. It identified distinctive challenges and viewing behaviors associated with Chinese live streams.
- Empirical examination: The study empirically examined users’ live streaming practices in China within a large and ever-growing market.The paper frames Chinese live streaming as a social-technological phenomenon with different content types from North America.
- Engagement and interaction: The analysis considered users’ motivations, streaming practices, social interactions beyond streams, and important engagement factors.These dimensions were used to understand how users engage with live streaming.
- Distinctive behaviors: The study identified unique challenges and viewing behaviors encountered with Chinese live streams.The authors state that these findings can serve as a blueprint for further work, though the supplied passage is truncated.