Live streaming offers an unprecedented opportunity for content creators (broadcasters) to deliver their content to consumers (viewers) in real time. In a live stream, viewers may send virtual gifts (tips) to the broadcaster and engage free of charge with likes and chats. These activities reflect viewers’ underlying emotion and are likely to be affected by the broadcaster’s emotion. This paper examines the role of emotion in interactive and dynamic business settings such as live streaming. To account for the possibility that broadcaster emotion, viewer emotion, and viewer activities influence each other, we estimate a panel vector autoregression (PVAR) model on data at the minute level from 1,450 live streams. The results suggest that a happier broadcaster makes the audience happier and begets intensified viewer activities, in particular tips. In addition, broadcasters reciprocate viewer engagement with more smiles. Further analyses suggest that these effects are pronounced only after a live stream has been active for a while and they manifest only in streams by broadcasters who had more experience, received more tips, or were more popular in past live streams. These results help platforms and broadcasters optimize marketing interventions such as broadcaster emotion enhancement in live streaming and quantify the financial returns.

实时流媒体为内容创建者（广播者）提供了前所未有的机会，可以将其内容实时交付给消费者（观看者）。在实时流中，观众可以向广播公司发送虚拟礼物（提示），并免费进行喜欢和聊天。这些活动反映了观众的内在情绪，很可能会受到广播公司情绪的影响。本文研究了情感在互动和动态业务环境（例如实时流媒体）中的作用。为了说明广播者的情绪，观看者的情绪和观看者的活动相互影响的可能性，我们在1,450个实时流的分钟级别上，对数据进行了面板向量自回归（PVAR）模型估计。结果表明，更快乐的广播员使观众更快乐，并激发了更多的观众活动，特别是提示。此外，广播公司还以更多的笑容使观众参与其中。进一步的分析表明，只有现场直播活跃了一段时间后，这些影响才会显现，并且只有在拥有更多经验，收到更多提示或在过去的现场直播中更受欢迎的广播公司的情况下，这些影响才会显现出来。这些结果可帮助平台和广播公司优化营销干预措施，例如在实时流媒体中增强广播公司的情绪，并量化财务收益。