When engagement becomes numbness: how hedonic content design shapes digital brand engagement in subscription platforms

Pleasure-driven design is increasingly applied across over-the-top (OTT) media platforms that deliver video content without traditional cable, featuring auto-play, personalised recommendations, and easy-to-use interfaces. This study examines the effect of pleasure-driven design on binge-watching behaviour by assessing how binge-watching induces emotional numbness, ultimately affecting overall digital brand engagement. It also evaluates the conjunctive effect of content satisfaction. A quantitative research design was adopted, using a structured survey administered to 400 paid OTT users in Kerala, India. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed to assess the measurement model and direct, mediating, and moderating relationships among the study variables. The findings reveal that pleasure-driven design features influence binge-watching behaviour (β = 0.354, p = 0.000). Increased binge-watching is associated with emotional numbness (β = 0.537, p = 0.000), which in turn negatively affects digital brand engagement (β = −0.408, p = 0.000). The results further indicate that binge-watching and emotional numbness jointly mediate the relationship between pleasure-driven design and digital brand engagement (β= −0.077, p = 0.003). Moreover, content satisfaction significantly strengthens the negative impact of emotional numbness on users’ engagement with OTT platforms (β = −0.234, p = 0.000). The results suggest that OTT service providers should reconsider excessive reliance on persuasive design mechanisms that promote prolonged viewing.