From viewers to tourists: Compensation psychology in travel live streaming

Real-scene travel live streaming (TLS) has increasingly become an effective tool for fostering social connection and stimulating destination desire, particularly appealing to individuals with compensatory social needs. By enabling real-time interaction between viewers and streamers, TLS creates a psychologically supportive virtual environment that mitigates stress and fosters emotional connection through self-empowerment, reflection, and social interaction, thereby enriching the tourism experience and enhancing destination desire. However, most existing studies focus on external stimuli that influence viewers’ destination desire, such as TLS platform features, attributes, and servicescape elements, while viewers’ compensatory psychology and streamer characteristics remain underexplored. Accordingly, the present study, based on viewers’ practical needs, applies parasocial relationship theory to examine viewers’ social compensatory personality traits (social anxiety, shyness, and vulnerable narcissism) and streamer characteristics (authenticity, affability, and knowledge spillover) on destination desire. Using 653 valid responses, structural equation modeling results indicate that both personality traits and streamer characteristics significantly predict parasocial relationship formation, which subsequently enhances emotional well-being and strengthens destination desire. This study broadens the research perspective on real-scene TLS and offers valuable insights for tourism practitioners, multi-channel network agencies, and destination marketers.