Binge-watching behaviour Among College students: A uses and gratifications perspective

In the recent past, more and more online streaming sites are booming in India with abundance of content, titles and shows. The increasing number of these online streaming sites shows that there are viewers who subscribe to their content and watch them regularly. With this trend, a new behavioural phenomenon has emerged, namely, binge watching. The viewers “binge-watch,” i.e. view multiple episodes of the same television series in a single sitting. This study has done an exploratory research on the factors that influence the youth, more specifically college students, to binge watch online steaming sites. Basing the study on the uses and gratifications theory, and through a survey method, the study has found that the college students are strongly motivated to binge-watch to gratify their needs of belonging to friends and peer group, escape reality, and entertainment and curiosity.