Binge-Watching as Case of Escapist Entertainment Use

Although the concept of escapism is widely used in entertainment research, it lacks theoretical and empirical differentiation. Based on the transactional model of stress and coping, we extend previous attempts to conceptualize escapism as a form of emotion-focused avoidance coping. In contrast to the primarily negative connotation of escapism found in prior research, we propose that escapist entertainment use may be a functional coping strategy in some situations and may thus have beneficial effects on the well-being of media users. To develop and illustrate our perspective, we turn to binge-watching as a prominent example of escapist entertainment use. We show exemplarily how escapist binge-watching can contribute to recovery from stress and close our chapter with reflections on how to further develop escapism research.