Understanding Virtual Gifting Behavior on UGC Video Platforms: The Roles of Mukbang Content Values and Danmaku Engagement

Virtual gifting has become a crucial mechanism for digital content platforms to achieve commercialization. However, existing research has largely approached gifting behavior through creator-centric frameworks and treated user interactions as homogeneous signals, leaving the inherent value of digital content and the multi-dimensional nature of danmaku engagement underexplored. To fill this gap, this study examines the impact of different dimensions of mukbang UGC consumption values and danmaku engagement on virtual gifting amounts in non-real-time content consumption scenarios, and further analyzes the mediating role of video popularity. We collected panel data from the Bilibili platform, and used panel fixed-effects models and bootstrap methods for hypothesis testing. The results show that different dimensions of UGC consumption values and danmaku engagement have heterogeneous impacts on content dissemination performance and economic performance, while video popularity plays a selective mediating role. This study refines the Theory of Consumption Values by revealing its differentiated behavioral conversion in digital content settings, advances the decoupling perspective between content virality and monetization, conceptualizes danmaku as heterogeneous social signals, and extends virtual gifting research to asynchronous environments where content-centered mechanisms take precedence over creator-driven dynamics.