More than watching: An empirical and experimental examination on the impacts of live streaming user-generated video consumption

Live streaming user-generated video (UGV), a nascent format of crowdsourced content, has grown massive popularity among social media users and is believed to have substantial potential business influences. However, industry practitioners express concerns regarding this new form on social media platforms and the influences of live streaming UGV consumption lack research. Motivated such, through a uniquely merged dataset from the video game industry, we conduct a series of panel time-series empirical analyses to investigate the business value of live streaming UGV consumption. Further, we propose a conceptual framework based on the sense of community literature to understand the consequences of live streaming UGV consumption and verify it through several online experiments. This research contributes to the IS literature by shedding light on the influences of emergent crowdsourced content, providing a conceptual framework to existing literature, and offering rich managerial implications and guidelines to managers regarding utilizing live streaming UGVs.