The Influence Mechanism of Emotional Value of New Media Healing Content on Users’ Psychological Attachment and Rewatching Behavior

Abstract

In an environment marked by information overload and accelerating social rhythms, young people frequently experience emotional pressure, loneliness, and mental fatigue. Healing content-such as slow-life vlogs, nature scenery videos, and gentle graphic narratives-has become an important medium for emotional regulation. Existing studies have studied the cultural characteristics and psychological functions of therapeutic content, but there is little evidence that emotional value establishes emotional connection with users and urges them to watch it over and over again. Based on the media attachment theory, this study regards the emotional value of treatment content as three things: companionship, relaxation and comfort. We established a mediation model with psychological attachment as the main factor. We collected the questionnaire data of 426 people aged between 18 and 35, and analyzed them by reliability and validity test, correlation analysis, regression analysis and mediation guidance methods. The results show that emotional value and its three parts are helpful to establish psychological attachment among users. Psychological attachment acts as a complete connection between emotional value and re-viewing. In other words, emotional value does not directly lead to watching again, but it helps to watch again and again by strengthening psychological attachment. These findings well explain the different parts of emotional value and reveal the whole path between emotion and repetitive behavior. This provides a clear theoretical framework for studying the emotional communication and behavior of media users.