在新冠疫情的影响下，“宅经济”成为经济发展的主要模式之一。直播行业作为“宅经济”的一环在疫情的催化下蓬勃发展，直播形式也由过去集中于才艺和游戏的单一形式逐渐演变为与零售、教育等传统行业结合的多样发展。直播行业在疫情期间迅速积累了大批新的用户，而后疫情时代其用户规模依然保持高速增长。观看主播直播并向主播打赏虚拟礼物作为一种新的线上娱乐消费场景是直播行业从业者最主要的收入方式，同时从主播被打赏的虚拟礼物进行抽成也是目前广大平台盈利的主要渠道。因此，对直播行业收入影响因素的研究不仅可以为相关从业者提高收入水平提供理论支持，同时也对直播平台未来持续且稳定的发展至关重要。但主播这一新兴职业的收入方式与现有职业的薪酬体系存在较大差异，现有职业可以通过延长工作时间提高收入水平，而主播的收入水平完全依赖于用户的打赏金额，更长时间的直播是否可以有效提高主播收到的打赏是值得研究的。根据相关数据显示，目前全平台开播量趋稳但直播总时长显著增长的现象说明了主播大都选择延长直播时长，因此本文将主播的直播时长与获得的打赏作为主要研究目标试图验证劳动经济学对普遍职业工时与薪酬的研究结论是否也适用于主播的直播时长与收入的关系。本文首先梳理了直播行业的发展的背景历程，并根据已有学术研究对用户观看直播及打赏主播的行为原因进行分析，总结归纳已证实的主播收入影响因素并将其作为控制变量加入到实证模型中。实证结果显示，主播当日延长直播时长可以有效提高当日收入水平，但其以小时为单位的收入水平随当日直播时长的增加而显著下降。通过进一步分析，本文发现主播当日的直播时长与当日的收入水平符合“倒U形”关系，在主播直播时间不超过14.71小时，主播延长直播时间会有助于收入的提升，但随着直播超过14.71小时后，主播当日的收入水平反而随直播时间的上升而下降。因此，主播通过增加直播时长的方式并不能直接有效地提高收入水平。
“Stay-at-home” economy became one of the most essential economic development models due to Covid-19. Live streaming, benefited from the pandemic, had gained considerable number of new users in 2020 and the user scale still continues to grow at a rapid rate in the post-pandemic period. Most of the live streaming were focused in gaming and talent performance previously, while it now transformed to varies formations combined with education, retail, etc. Donations to streamers, as a new type of online entertainment consumption, is the main income source of streamers. Live streaming platforms also rely on the donations, since most of their revenue is earned from streamers’ donations. Therefore, research in the influencing factors of donations will not only provide theoretic support to improve streamers’ income, but also contributes to the stable growth of live streaming platforms. Streamers, as a new occupation, has a quite different pay system compared with other occupations, it is worth studying whether streamers could improve their donations through extending streaming duration.In this paper, we combine the academic research results from labor economics and collected data from the most famous live stream platforms currently in China, Douyu TV and Huya TV, to analyze the influencing factors of streamers’ donations. The empirical result reveals that daily received donations of streamers will be improved when they extend duration of live streaming, while the hourly average donations received decline along with longer streaming. With further research, we find a significant inverse U-shaped relationship between duration of streaming and donations received by streamers. The extreme point is 14.71 hours, that is, donations received by streamers increase when streamers choose to extend duration of live streaming, but the longer streamers streaming, the lower amount of donations will be received once the duration of streaming excess 14.71 hours. Hence, extending live streaming duration will not effectively improve streamers’ donation level.
