Predicting viewer gifting behavior in sports live streaming platforms: The impact of viewer perception and satisfaction

Sports viewers have been offered an unprecedented viewing experience to share their passion with their team and communicate in real-time with a streamer and other viewers by sending messages and virtual gifts on sport live streaming platforms (SLSPs). These activities can reflect viewers’ underlying perceptions and levels of satisfaction towards the viewing experience. Using actual viewers’ behavioral big data, comprising of 16,204 real-time messages and 5,540 virtual gifts, this study combines machine learning techniques and structural equation modelling (SEM) to examine the influence of viewer value perception on gifting behavior through the mediation effect of satisfaction. The results suggest that satisfaction fully mediates the effects of viewer value perception on gifting amount and partially mediates the effects of value perception on gifting number. Important theoretical and managerial implications of this study for social live streaming service (SLSSs) researchers and practitioners are also discussed.