Watch This! : The Influence of Recommender Systems and Social Factors on the Content Choices of Streaming Video on Demand Consumers

Abstract

Streaming Video-on-demand (SVOD) services are getting increasingly popular. Current research, however, lacks knowledge about consumers’ content decision processes and their respective influencing factors. Thus, the work reported on in this paper explores socio-technical interrelations of factors impacting content choices in SVOD, examining the social factors WOM, eWOM and peer mediation, as well as the technological influence of recommender systems. A research model based on the Theory of Reasoned Action and the Technology Acceptance Model was created and tested by an n = 186 study sample. Results show that the quality of a recommender system and not the social mapping functionality is the strongest influencing factor on its perceived usefulness. The influence of the recommender system and the influence of the social factors on the behavioral intention to watch certain content is nearly the same. The strongest social influencing factor was found to be peer mediation.