Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop and verify a scale that reflects the mukbang watching motives for mukbang viewers. Through a literature survey, 146 common keywords and six types of common motives were derived by analyzing the food-related content viewing motivation scale. Around 38 preliminary questions were constructed by evaluating their understanding, importance, and suitability through second content validity verifications. Content validity analysis and exploratory factor analysis were performed on the results of the on-line questionnaire survey. Participants were 462 individuals with experience in watching mukbang. A total of 24 questions and the following six sub-factors were derived: “The pursuit of mental and physical stability,” “The pursuit of entertainment,” “The pursuit of social relations,” “The pursuit of information,” “The pursuit of vicarious satisfaction (identification),” and “The pursuit of avoidance and killing time.” Individual fit of each item and appropriateness of the response category were examined through the Rasch model of the question response theory, and it was found that all items met the fitness criteria. Furthermore, the 5-point Likert scale was confirmed to be appropriate. To verify whether the exploratory factor analysis results were valid, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on 424 people with experience in watching mukbang, and the six factor structures were found to be appropriate. Determining the convergence validity and discrimination validity of the mukbang viewing motivation scale using correlation analysis indicated a high correlation with each sub-scale of the social networking service (SNS) usage motivation and a low correlation with the food craving scale. Finally, the implications, limitations, and future research tasks of this study are presented.