Examination of Twitch users' usage motivations and donation behaviours in the context of uses and gratifications approach

Social media has become one of important parts of the daily life practices with the development and proliferation of the internet technologies. Social media sites which prioritize sharing and interaction, also enable a live broadcast. Different sites host broadcasts with different formats, and these sites gain importance among the social media platforms with their user numbers which grow exponentitally day by day. One of these platforms is Twitch TV website which is a live video streaming platform focussing on e-sports and video games. Main theme of the broadcasts in this site is streamers who play video games. Twitch TV users watch streamer's games and become a subscriber of streamer with a payment or donate if users like the streamer. While paid subscription can be done for a fee, amounts of the donations differ, and these donations can reach serious amounts. Streamers who reach a certain follower number can easily earn their keep with this way. In this study, usage motivations of Twitch users in Turkey and effect of these motivations on money spending in Twitch platform were examined by using a quantitative research method. According to the results of the study, while fun gratification come into prominence in Twitch TV usage motivations, as for donation behaviour, socialization gratification was found to have much more effect.