Audience Enjoyment of Murder Mystery Game Reality Shows: The Influence of Affective Disposition, Suspense and Parasocial Interactions

Murder Mystery Game reality shows have risen to be a popular media entertainment in China. To figure out what contributes to the popularity of Murder Mystery Game shows, the current study seeks to examine the roles of the crime narrative and the celebrities in audiences’ enjoyment of the shows. Our study integrates the affective disposition model, the concept of suspense, the meaning transfer model, and the theory of parasocial interactions. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 350 respondents in China in 2022. The results show that audiences’ liking of the celebrities who play detective roles in the reality shows is significantly transferred to their affective disposition toward the detectives. The impact of audiences’ positive disposition toward the detectives on their enjoyment is mediated by the audience’s suspenseful feelings gained in the crime narrative of the reality shows. Besides, the audience’s parasocial interactions with the detectives mediate the relationship between their positive disposition toward the detectives and suspenseful feelings. The current study is one of the first empirical studies analyzing audiences’ enjoyment of Murder Mystery Game reality shows. We extend the area of affective disposition inquiry to Murder Mystery Game reality shows. The central propositions in the disposition model – audiences’ liking of the characters influences their enjoyment and the mediating role of suspense in this relationship – were confirmed in this new form of media entertainment. The results show that the affective disposition model could also be applied to explain audiences’ enjoyment of reality shows – Murder Mystery Game reality shows, besides scripted dramas and sports events. Beyond testing the disposition model in a new context, the current research also investigated the complexity of audiences’ affective dispositions. Recent studies of the affective disposition model developed the original argument by showing that audiences’ long-term affective disposition – the liking of the celebrity who plays the character affect their situational affective disposition – the liking of the character. Although celebrity likeability was added to the disposition model, there lacks a theoretical reasoning concerning how and why celebrity likeability influences character likeability. Our study fills this research gap by using source likeability in the source attractiveness model to conceptualize celebrity likeability and character likeability and introducing the meaning transfer model to justify the connection of celebrity likeability and character likeability theoretically. Moreover, we developed the disposition model by enriching the explanation of the generation of suspenseful feelings. We examined the mediating role of parasocial interactions in the relationship between character likeability and suspense. The significant finding suggests that the parasocial interactions between audiences and the characters play a critical role when audiences’ liking of the character evokes the suspenseful feelings. Practical implications concerning the role of celebrities in enhancing audience’s engagement and loyalty to Murder Mystery Game reality shows in specific, and popular media entertainment in general are also discussed.