Jump Into Comics: Can Reader-AI Interaction Boost Willingness to Pay

Interactive comics driven by Generative AI, as a representative emerging medium, are reshaping the narrative relationship and emotional connection between humans and AI: users actively co-create “their own stories” in real-time through natural language. A randomized controlled trial and PLS-SEM analysis conducted on 494 interactive comic users revealed: (a) At the motivational level, the initiative of interaction has a significant direct positive effect on willingness to pay (WTP). (b) At the emotional level, AI interaction quality drives consumption decisions through a chained mediation path of “AI Interaction Quality (AIQ) → Flow Experience (FE) → Interactive Character Symbiosis (ICS) → WTP.” (C) Multi-group analysis confirms that this mechanism remains robust across different contexts. This study not only proposes and validates a new construct called ICS, applicable to scenarios of limited interaction but high emotional investment, thereby expanding the understanding of Consumer-AI relationships in HCI.