Impacts of tightening policies on live-streaming platforms’ financial performance

Abstract

The rapid growth of Social Live Streaming Services (SLSS) has attracted increasing attention from researchers. However, interactions between regulators and live-streaming platforms, as well as the negative side of business related to noncompliance, have been scarcely examined. To bridge these gaps, this study examined the political impacts of three tightening policies on the financial performance of live-streaming platforms based on Signaling Theory and Construal Level Theory. Results show that negative political impacts exist only for policies with a high level of information concreteness. This study not only contributes to the literature on SLSS and related theories but also generates significant managerial implications for different stakeholders in SLSS.