Feeling in sync : exploring emotional contagions between live streamers and viewers in tourism live streaming

Abstract

Digital emotional contagion shapes how emotions spread and align among participants in the online community. This phenomenon is especially evident in the real-time interactions of tourism live streaming. However, little is known about how emotional contagion unfolds during these real-time interactions. Given that, this study seeks to examine the generative mechanisms of emotional contagion in tourism live streaming. Study One used dynamic time warping and panel vector autoregression to analyze the contagion process across 105 tourism live streaming sessions. Study Two applied BERTopic modeling to identify emotionally contagious topics engaging streamers and viewers. The findings deepen the theoretical understanding of digital emotional contagion by highlighting its interactivity, multi-directionality, and synchronicity. It also reveals the complex interplay between positive and negative emotional contagion and contagious topics. These insights help digital marketers understand the direction and characteristics of emotional contagions, and effectively foster viewers’ emotional engagement for community building and loyalty.