Viewers Actually ‘Binge-Watch’ TV With a Lot of Self-Control
hubie writes:
Research reveals people schedule their binge watching and will pay with money or time to binge shows:
If viewers sometimes feel guilty about binge-watching television programing, they really shouldn't. Though its name implies impulsive behavior, binge-watching TV is a common activity planned out by viewers, suggests new research from the University of California San Diego's Rady School of Management and School of Global Policy and Strategy.
The study, in collaboration with the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University and Fox School of Business at Temple University, reveals that viewers prefer to binge-watch certain types of programming over others. They're also more likely to pay to watch shows consecutively and/or wait to be able to consume more than one episode at a time.
"We find that the notion of a show being so interesting that it just sucks people in and they can't pull away is not the whole story," said study coauthor Uma Karmarkar, assistant professor of marketing and innovation at UC San Diego's Rady School of Management and School of Global Policy and Strategy. "Binge-watching can have a negative connotation, like binge eating or binge drinking. It is generally seen as impulsive, maybe problematic, but certainly very indulgent. However, media consumption is more complex. Binge-watching is not always about a failure of self-control; it can also be a thoughtful preference and planned behavior."
The paper that is forthcoming in "The Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied" finds that people tend to plan to binge shows they perceive to be more sequential and connected-those that have an overarching narrative. [...]
However, the authors do find that no matter how bingeable a show is, viewers are much less likely to plan to watch multiple episodes if the streaming service or channel features commercials.
[...] But the differences in plans to binge independent and sequential media were also replicated in how people approach streaming media in the form of online education courses. A separate experiment revealed that people are more likely to plan to binge a Coursera class if it is perceived to be more sequential. Taking this one step further, the authors analyzed real-world data from the Coursera platform and found that these plans to binge-learn accurately predicted viewing behavior in enrolled students.
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