为 “陪伴” 买单？准社会关系视角下音频知识付费决策研究

Despite the potential impacts of users’ sense of companionship brought by the speakers of online audio knowledge on their consumption decisions, published literature on this topic is scarce. From the perspective of parasocial relationship, this study aims to identify the factors influencing the formation of the parasocial relationship between users and speakers, and explore its impacts on users’ intention to pay for online audio knowledge. A survey was administered to collect data and the results well supported our conceptual model. Specifically, besides content attraction, three variables of interpersonal attraction (i.e., vocal attraction, social attraction, task attraction) positively affected the parasocial relationship, which had a positive impact on users’ willingness to pay. Additionally, individual’s avoidant attachment was revealed to moderate the relationship between vocal attraction and parasocial relationship. This study not only provides us a relationship-related perspective to understand the mechanism of users’ willingness to pay for online audio knowledge, but also contributes to the development of the theory of parasocial relationship in the new media context.