The bright side of emotional extremity: Evidence from tipping in live streaming platform

Live streaming has enabled viewers to interact with broadcasters and peer viewers, as well as tip the broadcaster based on their emotional state. While most tips are small, a minority of viewers tip extremely large. To uncover such unique tipping patterns, we draw on the emotion literature and competitive arousal theory to examine how viewers’ emotional extremity affects tipping behavior and how broadcaster's emotional response moderates the baseline effect. This study contributes to the emerging live streaming literature by revealing the differential effects of emotional extremity on tipping amount and frequency and provides practical implications for broadcasters and platforms to steer tipping behavior.