Infusing backstage to frontstage: exploring tourists’ on-site live-streaming watching experience

Watching live-streaming on-site is growing ever-popular but heavily under-researched in tourism practices. Drawing on Goffman’s dramaturgical theory and Freud’s theory of scopophilia, this study advances existing research by proposing and empirically validating a conceptual framework that integrates traditionally separated elements – backstage (authenticity), frontstage (entertainment), and infusion (social presence) – to explain tourist’s continuous watching intention and citizenship behavior. This study surveyed 520 Chinese tourists who watched on-site live-streaming at various outdoor tourism attractions. By adopting partial least squares structural equation modeling, this study confirms that psychological ownership is a salient mediator between authenticity, entertainment, social presence, and tourists’ continuous watching intention and citizenship behaviors. Moreover, tourists’ live-stream engagement positively moderates the relationships between these three antecedents and psychological ownership. This study enriches dramaturgical theory and scopophilia theory by further delineating the simultaneous interplay of backstage and frontstage elements within the contemporary digital landscape, offering insights into this hybrid form of live-streaming in destinations.