Transportation or Narrative Completion? Attentiveness during Binge-Watching Moderates Regret

Abstract

Extant results on the binge-watching outcomes have been mixed. This study sought to examine the crucial factor of attentiveness that might help to enhance viewer experience and mitigate post-binge regret, as well as differentiate the motivation of narrative transportation from narrative completion. While narrative transportation involves a viewer getting unconsciously swept away by the story, the motivation of narrative completion is a more self-aware, cognizant effort to progress through the story. A survey (N = 800) determined that the degree to which an individual pays attention to a show may either increase or decrease subsequent regret, depending on the motivation for binge-watching.

Personality Traits and Motivation as Factors Associated with Symptoms of Problematic Binge-Watching

“…Such results seem to comply with research which implies that problematic binge-watching can be related to the regulation of negative emotions, impulsivity, loss of control and regret [7,8,38,50]. Furthermore, Tóth-Király et al [32] and Pittman and Steiner [33] imply that neuroticism is related to binge-watching and it is also a significant predictor of Internet addiction [36,51,52]. Another significant factor for all symptoms of problematic binge-watching, apart from Loss of control and neglect of duties, was low Agreeableness.…”

Binge-Watching Behaviour: The Role of Impulsivity and Depressive Symptoms

“…Consequently, the watching of several episodes of one series in a row has become a popular viewing pattern. Although no empiri-DOI: 10.1159/000506307 cally validated definition exists so far, several authors suggested watching > 2 episodes in one sitting as criterion for binge-watching [4][5][6][7].…”

Binge-Watching Serial Video Content: Exploring the Subjective Phenomenology of the Binge-Watching Experience

“…Specifically, they found that when viewers consider narrative transportation important for binge-watching, attentive viewing produces the least amount of regret; when the importance of transportation was low, attention levels to content did not influence binge-watching regret. In view of the current study's data and Pittman and Steiner's (2019) cross-sectional survey results, there is an opportunity here for binge-watching research to expand Green and Brock's (2000;Green & Brock, 2002) transportation theory, by bringing in insights from psychological research on the intrinsic motivational forces that drive human behavior.…”

“…In that sense, results here suggest that engagement in binge-watching can fuel the development of an intrinsic motivation resulting from gratifications associated with long and frequent viewing sessions, to the point that binge-watching becomes a selfreinforcing behavior-a proposition advanced by Panda and Pandey (2017), but not yet tested empirically. Pittman and Steiner (2019) noted this possibility in a recent quantitative investigation of binge-watching. They interpreted correlational links between narrative transportation, attention and binge-watching regret as indicators that narrative transportation may motivate binge-watching.…”

“…Nevertheless, due to the inherent nature of qualitative research, those contributions forego analytical exploration of potentially significant associations between variables relevant to the bingewatching experience. The present study analyzes quantitative data collected from a relatively large sample of binge-watchers to hypothesize and test for the existence of such relationships (see Pittman & Steiner, 2019 for another quantitative approach). In that sense, we build on, validate and expand existing literature.…”