Understanding audience involvement: Conceptualizing and manipulating identification and transportation

Two central avenues for audience involvement in entertainment are identification and transportation. This study conceptually and empirically differentiated between these processes by manipulating information about the hero of a film and about the plot in order to affect the ways viewers respond to the film and character. The valence of information about the hero affected the level of identification (but not the level of transportation), and the time of deeds affected the level of transportation (but not the level of identification). These results provide evidence that identification and transportation are distinct processes and an analysis of how each of them relates to enjoyment supports this conclusion. Results are discussed in terms of their theoretical and methodological contribution to the study of audience involvement.