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negative emotions about their own day. Behaviorally, for habit only one American participant was heavily dependent on the media, which impacted her life negatively. In general, participants from both Taiwan and the USA made clear statements that while before they did tend to depend more on drama binge-watching, they are now making conscious efforts not to rely on it so much as before as for it not to have a great impact on their daily life (e.g., in their school, work and social life).
5.2. Contributions and limitations
From a theoretical perspective, this exploratory study provides contributions in binge-watching behavior by illuminating and filling in the knowledge gaps regarding psychological status, binge-watching behaviors and further outcomes among young OTT TV users who binge-watch dramas.
It adds knowledge to an unexplored and important segment of the binge-watching behavior, the psychological status of viewers while binge-watching dramas and adds a new sub-code, spatial presence. Furthermore, it further adds to the minimal knowledge that has been found so far regarding the outcomes binge-watching has on the viewers. Additionally, this exploratory study is one of the first to conduct a cross-cultural, binge-watching investigation on dramas, which finds some differences of the drama binge-watching process between Taiwan and USA users and opens the door for other cross-cultural comparisons in similar media behaviors. Moreover, this research develops an integrated theoretical framework to examine the binge-watching process that incorporates U&G, Flow Theory, and MSDT. First, this study contributes in analyzing binge-watching outcomes and the cultural influences on the users through the MSDT lens.
MSDT acted as a platform to give an overview of the binge-watching phenomenon as a whole to understand the relationship between societal systems (i.e., USA and Taiwan) and media systems (i.e., OTT platforms), and the relationship between media systems (OTT binge-watching videos) and the audience (Millennial users). From the findings, two new sub-codes emerged, parasocial breakup as an affective outcome and social interaction as a behavioral outcome. Parasocial breakup specifically had never been linked to binge-watching before. Second, Flow Theory was used to understand the psychological status of young OTT TV users during a binge-watching session; which had never been implemented before in a study such as this. From the interview data the new sub-code spatial presence emerged, which enhances Flow Theory’s immersive flow
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as this sub-code greatly emphasizes how deeply engrossed a viewer can become within the content when engaging in drama binge-watching that they can feel as if they are characters within the drama they are consuming. Lastly, past literature indicated that U&G had been previously used to lightly explore motivations to binge-watch; however, this study delved deeper into understanding the reasons behind user motivations to binge-watch dramas.
Practically, these findings will help develop the entertainment industry, specifically OTT industry players (i.e., Netflix, Hulu, IQIYI, LINE TV, LiTV, KKTV, and friDay), so they can understand the differences among cross-cultural binge-watchers regarding their motivations, use patterns and consequences to develop content and services that can have a greater level of audience engagement. Furthermore, the findings on binge-watching behavior regarding content, device used, time spent and OTT platforms services preferred will allow the industry players, even the local emerging Taiwanese OTT platforms, to have a different perspective on how they can develop their own platforms and what content to provide to attract Millennial OTT drama binge-watchers. From the findings in this study, OTT industry players should focus on who their target audience in to develop engaging storylines. Furthermore, they should hire popular actors and actresses in the region to make the drama even more attractive for the viewers. The drama should also have strong characters and interesting dialogue that viewers can connect with for a more immersive experience. Lastly, OTT industry players should focus on dialogue and filming quality and aspects like length of the episode and the length of the series as they play an important role to create attractive content for the viewers. Moreover, the findings in regards to health problems as an outcome will raise awareness for Millennial OTT TV users for possible disadvantages of binge-watching and possibly promote creating more ‘healthy’ binge-watching experiences. To tackle these issues, OTT players could develop interesting, entertaining and informative campaigns to raise awareness in this regard on their platforms. They could incorporate these campaign ads within their own content; for instance, Netflix’s design could be used as model. Netflix has the seamless ‘next episode’ platform design where episodes automatically change without the viewer actively engaging with the platform. After many episodes watched without any interaction with the viewer (i.e., changing dramas, pausing, or actively pressing the button for the next episode), Netflix will pause the content and ask if you want to continue watching. In a similar fashion, after many episodes watched, OTT industry
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players could insert health issues awareness ads by posing questions that will make the viewer aware of how long they have been idle watching dramas. For example, they could ask ‘When was
the last time you drank water?,’ ‘How sleepy are you?,’ or ‘Have you eaten yet?’
In this study, the researcher acknowledges several limitations. The first is the language barrier.
The researcher is not proficient in Chinese, hence all the Taiwanese participants had to be interviewed in English—except for one of the participants whose interview and translation was managed by a Chinese native speaker. Future studies in cross-cultural environments might employ a full-time translator of the required, unknown language. The second limitation is the sampling method, which consisted of purposive and snowball sampling from the researcher’s online and offline social network. This method was necessary due to language barrier with Taiwan and distance issues with the USA. However, the researcher attempted to eliminate bias by only allowing 1 referral per participant. To resolve this issue, future studies might attempt to, again, have a full-time translator and fly to the locations to gather the data. Third limitation is the variation in in sampling, different jobs, ethnicities, and educational levels. Future studies might target specific groups for a better understanding of that specific group’s binge-watching behavior. The fourth limitation is the variation in content. Participant’s interests in dramas and genres vary greatly and it is difficult to quantify specific content that influences their binge-watching behavior and what patterns are created. Future studies might attempt a quantitative approach through surveys with a large sampling to see what patterns are created due to content and the correlations between behaviors, motivations, and outcomes. Future studies might also attempt a qualitative, longitudinal study to see how the binge-watching process evolves throughout time and how this affects the behaviors, motivations, and outcomes of individuals.
Lastly, when interviewing the participants about their psychological status while conducting a binge of a drama, it seemed sometimes they were not as aware or sure of themselves while in this stage of binge-watching behavior. Hence, since psychological status has never been explored before, future research might conduct an observation study of participants as they binge-watch dramas. This could provide a more in-depth look and understanding of this segment of the behavior.
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