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The Impact of Movie Quality, Short-Video Shock, Audience Willingness and Residents’ Income on Movie Box Office

Author(s)

Lingyu Sun

Affiliation(s)

Department of FinTech, Dongwu Business School, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

Abstract

In recent years, the growth of domestic film box office has faced multiple pressures. Clarifying the core driving factors of the film market is of great significance for the sustainable development of the industry. This study incorporates film quality, the impact of short videos, audience viewing intentions, and residents’ disposable income into a unified empirical analysis framework. Using multiple linear regression and vector autoregression models, it systematically explores the static impact and dynamic transmission mechanism of each variable on film box office. The results show that the influence of the four core factors on film box office, from largest to smallest, is audience viewing intentions, film quality, the impact of short videos, and residents’ income. Among them, viewing intentions and high-quality film content constitute the absolute dominant force driving box office, showing a significant long-term positive pulling effect. The expansion of the short video industry has caused substantial attention plunder and substitution for traditional cinemas, but this negative impact exhibits a dynamic evolution characteristic of strong immediate destructiveness and diminishing marginal returns. At the same time, the steady growth of residents’ income at the macro level provides the most solid economic foundation for the expansion of the film market. This study effectively clarifies the inherent driving logic of the current film market, confirming that the industry has fully entered a development stage driven by demand and where content is king. The research findings can provide rigorous theoretical support and practical reference for the film and television industry’s refined content creation, cross-media collaborative marketing, and scientific operation decisions of cinemas.

Keywords

Film Box Office; Film Quality; Impact of Short Videos; Willingness to Watch Movies; Residents’ Income

References

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