ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Advertising and Marketing Communication
How the Need for Cognition Influences Film Viewing Intentions Through Narrative Transportation: The Moderating Role of Emotional Contagion in Short-Video Marketing
Provisionally accepted
LEI LIU1,2*
Gen Wen Deng2- 1School of Journalism, Communication, Film and Television, Hainan Normal University, Haikou, China
- 2Hainan Normal University, Haikou, China
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This study examines the psychological mechanisms underlying viewers' intentions to watch films promoted through short-video platforms. Grounded in narrative transportation theory and the extended transportation-imagery model, we propose a moderated mediation model in which the need for cognition predicts viewing intention via narrative transportation, with emotional contagion moderating the relationship between transportation and intention. Data were collected from 362 Chinese users of short-video platforms through an online survey and analysed using structural equation modelling and bootstrap regression. The results demonstrate that narrative transportation mediates the relationship between the need for cognition and viewing intention. Additionally, emotional contagion significantly moderates the relationship between narrative transportation and intention, enhancing this effect when emotional contagion is high. These findings advance narrative persuasion theory by incorporating cognitive and affective individual differences into a unified framework and provide practical insights for designing targeted short-video marketing content.
Keywords: narrative transportation, emotional contagion, need for cognition, short-video marketing, moderated mediation
Received: 05 Sep 2025; Accepted: 11 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 LIU and Deng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: LEI LIU, leiliu@hainnu.edu.cn
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