Examining how emotions affect online audience retention: Empirical evidence from livestreaming electronic commerce platforms

The retention of audiences has become a pressing issue in the paradigm of livestreaming electronic commerce. Embracing the cognitive appraisal theory of emotions, this study develops a research model to gauge the relationship between emotion and audience retention. The results from 1,218,692 bullet comments from 491,348 users in 946 livestreaming sessions indicate that users’ valence and arousal affect retention positively, while the two dimensions of streamers’ emotions exert impacts in opposite directions. We further discover that intimacy has significant moderating effects in the research model. These findings emphasize the importance of understanding emotional dynamics in LSE in promoting audience retention.