Exploring the Behavioral Impact of Chinese Film and Television Celebrities: Evidence from 40 A-List Stars

Abstract

This article addresses the behavior of film stars by considering the film industry's reputation and Netizens’ attention. It notes that the current reputation mechanism may not be positively motivating film stars, highlighting an urgent need to establish a scientific and reasonable evaluation system. Furthermore, it suggests that the "eyeball effect" is not sustainable and that the film star group requires a "craftsman spirit."
The study builds a non-contractual model to explain the behavior of film stars, focusing on three-dimension films industry reputation and Netizens’ attention. Forty Chinese first-line film and television stars, selected from the Forbes celebrity list (2013-2017), serve as empirical objects. By constructing panel data, the article aims to explore the relationship between various factors and a star’s income across different dimensions, and to speculate on the factors that may affect a film star’s actions.
We demonstrate that: (1) there is no relationship between a star's earnings and the number of their programs; however, the total number of awards shows a significant negative correlation with earnings. (2) Search volume exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with a star’s earnings. (3) The number of fans, as a control variable, positively moderates the relationship between the number of awards and star’s earnings, and similarly between search volume and star’s earnings.