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spatial presence as a character within the drama. Lastly, content plays a key role throughout this segment of binge-watching behavior. The psychological status of intense concentration, time distortion, loss of self-consciousness and spatial presence were greatly influenced by the participants’ personal interest on the content and how engaging the content (i.e., genre, storyline, characters, dialogue, quality, etc.) was to them.
4.4. Binge-watching behavior (RQ3)
This section discusses in specific detail the participants’ binge-watching behavior (see Table 4), answering RQ3. Binge-watching behavior consists of time spent, device used, content and service types, and viewing context and in the proposed theoretical framework it is observed during the viewing segment of the linear, binge-watching behavior, Immersive Flow, which was discussed in section 4.3. OTT platforms and services and viewing context were discussed in section 4.1. as a background to understand how the binge-watching process begins.
4.4.1. Content types
The types of drama content watched vary greatly from person to person For the Taiwanese participants, the top four preferred genres were comedy, science fiction, drama and thriller.
Eighty-one percent of the Taiwanese participants watch Western content mainly from the United States or from United Kingdom. For example, shows like Friends and Westworld. Seventy-two percent watch Eastern content mainly from Japan Korea, Taiwan and China. For example, Lan
Ling Wang and Live. Interestingly, participants T1 (Master’s student, 24 yrs.), T4 (Master’s
student, 25 yrs.), and T5 (Undergraduate student, 22 yrs.) mentioned how their content preferences have changed throughout time regarding the genre or the country of the content.Additionally, there are many reasons why a viewer becomes interested in a specific drama, besides preferred genre or the country of the content. For all of the Taiwanese participants, storyline is the most important factor; however, all participants, except for participant T11, also mentioned that specific actors and actresses sometimes have some influence on them deciding to watch a drama. For participant T11 (Master’s student, 25 yrs.), aside from the storyline,
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characters play an important role in her interest on the drama, it depends on how the characters present themselves and if they have strong personalities (Participant T11, June 8th 2018).
While dramas can be very interesting to binge-watchers, there are some reasons why viewers could lose interest in a drama they were currently binge-watching. Sixty-three percent of the Taiwanese participants said that they lost interest in a drama when the storyline became boring, monotonous, repetitive and/or clichéd. Thirty-six percent said that if the drama became too long and it took a great amount of time to watch and follow it, they would lose interest. Interestingly, for participant T11 (Master’s student, 25 yrs.), her reasons for losing interest in a drama are if the main characters become boring or if there is just too much drama (Participant T11, June 8th 2018). Lastly, another interesting finding is that participant T3 (Master’s student, 24 yrs.) stated that he had never lost interest in any drama because he finds all the dramas he watches interesting, except for Walking Dead and Breaking Bad in which case he skipped the middle part and went to the end (Participant T3, May 24th 2018).
Similarly to the Taiwanese participants, for the American participants the top three genres preferred were comedy, drama and thriller. All of the American participants watch Western content from English speaking countries, mainly from the United States and United Kingdom.
For example, shows like Westworld and Grey’s Anatomy. Only 40% watch Eastern content mainly from Japan, Korea and Taiwan. For example, shows like Boys Over Flowers and Coffee
Prince. Similarly to a few of the Taiwanese participants, participants N1 (Production
coordinator, 24 yrs.) and N3 (Adevencement Services Coordinator, 25 yrs.) mentioned how as they grew older their content preferences have changed.Furthermore, aside from genre or the country of the content, all of the participants choose dramas mostly depending on storyline. However, 40% of the participants sometimes also look at the actors or actresses in the dramas before deciding to watch it. For participants N1 (Production coordinator, 24 yrs.), N2 (Billing Coordinator and EA to COO, 26 yrs.) and N5 (Junior Account Executive, 25 yrs.) structure (e.g. cliffhangers), dialogue quality, and filming (e.g. camera angles, image quality) play an important role on their decision. Lastly, participant N2 (Billing
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Coordinator and EA to COO, 26 yrs.), like participant T11, needs strong characters to be and remain interested in a drama.
American participants have varied reasons to lose interest in a specific drama they are binge-watching. Fifty percent said that if the storyline was too repetitive, too prolonged, without a real plot, nonsensical, outlandish, convoluted and/or confusing they would lose interest. Fifty percent based their decision on the characters; it depends if the characters are not interesting, act nonsensically, are unrealistic, or if a main character leaves the show. Furthermore, participant N3 (Adevencement Services Coordinator, 25 yrs.) and N6 (Laboratory Technician, 26 yrs.) said they would lose interest in a drama if the acting was bad. Lastly, interestingly, participant N4 (Master’s student, 26 yrs.) said he has never experienced losing interest in a drama, usually he knows if he will like a drama within the first two episodes (Participant N4, May 24th 2018).
4.4.2. Usage level and device used
Usage level varies greatly from participant to participant, no matter their nationality. Initially, to label the usage level of participants, this study based itself on Trouleau et al.’s (2016) study. In their study they categorized 3 levels of binge-watching: 1) “regular,” meaning 1 or 2 episodes are viewed in a session; 2) “binge-watching,” meaning 3 to seven episodes are viewed; and 3)
“hyper-binge,” meaning a significantly large number of episodes are consumed, which they explain is rare yet extreme viewing behavior (Trouleau et al., 2016). After taking these categories into consideration, average hours binge-watching per session and average hours binge-watching per week were also analyzed and used to decide the overall level of usage of the participants. Based off of the data mentioned, the three categories for this study are light, medium and heavy.
On average, the Taiwanese participants have binge-watched for 6 years, with the least amount of time being 3 years and the longest amount of time being 10 years. From all the participants, 55%
are light users; 36% are medium users; and 9% are heavy users. Furthermore, 90% percent of the Taiwanese participants prefer to use their laptop because it has a larger screen and is more comfortable for usage. Of these participants, 36% like to link their laptop to the TV via HDMI
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cable to have the experience through an even larger screen. Lastly, 45% of the participants prefer to use smartphones because they are convenient when they are outside their home so they can watch a few episodes on the go.
For the American participants, on average they have binge-watched for 9 years, the shortest time being 3 years and the longest time binging being 15 years. Of all the participants, 10% are light users; 30% are medium users; and 60% are heavy users. Moreover, 90% of the participants use laptops to binge-watch because they are easy to handle when watching on the bed and they have a bigger screen. Seventy percent of the participants use smartphones when on the go because
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This section discusses the outcomes for the Millennial OTT binge-watchers who engage in this behavior. The outcomes (affective, cognitive, and behavioral) were adapted from MSDT, which was used to answer RQ4 regarding the outcomes after young OTT TV users binge-watch dramas.