Lu Meng

With the global pandemic of COVID-19, it has been striking psychological burdens on individuals. Under this background, more and more people get wellbeing by watching live broadcasts. However, the psychological mechanism behind this phenomenon is still a black box. This study finds that when people watch a live broadcast and interact with anchors and other people, an interaction ritual chain is formed, and emotional energy is generated, thus making people experience and understand the meaning of the live interaction ritual chains. Under the effect of the meaning transfer model, people will generate wellbeing. Specifically, the basic meaning of live interaction drives people’s generation of wellbeing. The meanings of self-participation, self-display, self-concept, and self-renewal play a role in mediation in enhancing people’s wellbeing with the basic meaning of live broadcast interaction.

We explore the effectiveness of virtual influencers in promoting self-improvement products. Four studies demonstrate that compared with human influencers, virtual influencers can increase consumers’ self-improvement product preferences because of the realistic threats depicted by virtual influences. Moreover, this effect weakens or disappears when consumers and influencers are in a cooperative relationship, or when consumers are self-affirmed. By innovatively exploring virtual influencers’ impact on consumers’ perceptions of realistic threats, we enrich the antecedents of self-improvement product preferences, and provide implications for research and marketing practices.