Understanding Causes & Behavioral Factors of Watching Japanese Anime on Bangladesh's Perspective: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

In this 21st century the consumption of digital multimedia contents is at its peak. Japanese Anime also known as Anime, has been globalizing since early 1980s but it has seen its biggest rise in the 2000s. Nowadays people of all ages and cultures finds this amusing. Bangladesh is no different to this wave of Anime. Though there has been research on the consumption of other multi-media contents such as K-drama, Netflix series mostly on the behavioral impacts on the watchers, no proper work has been found regarding Japanese anime, the causes of watching & its impacts on the watchers of Bangladesh. We focused to understand how watching Japanese anime may influence one’s behaviors such as cosplaying, buying anime merchandises, learning Japanese, influencing others, visiting Japan and relationship with loving Japanese culture, knowing Japanese history and culture. We also tried to identify whether or not the anime watchers show signs of coping/escapism, emotional, social & enrichment motives of watching any media, the results show there’s an association between coping, social and emotional motives with watching anime. As for our post-acceptance behaviors, we found significant relationship with most of factors. We have thoroughly used statistical tests to answer our research questions. We also identified significant answers to some of our secondary research questions which is the relationship of other behavioral factors with cosplay and loving Japanese culture. We concluded that if one gets too lost watching anime, he/she might show signs coping/escapism motives along with the wishes to buy anime products, cosplaying, learning Japanese and others. This research opens up future possibilities to dig into several parts of behaviors of Anime watchers in future.