Understanding Digital Gifting Through Messengers Across Cultures: A Comparative Study of University Students in South Korea, China, and Japan

Digital gift-giving has become a key means of maintaining social relationships, but most existing research has focused on gifting within global e-commerce or social media platforms. The emergence of messenger-based gifting in East Asia, where gifting traditions are deeply rooted, remains underexplored. This study examines how in-app gifting services on the most widely used messaging platforms in South Korea (KakaoTalk), Japan (LINE), and China (WeChat) reflect and reshape culturally specific gifting practices. Through semi-structured interviews with 26 university students, we found that KakaoTalk facilitates frequent, informal exchanges aligned with Korea’s emphasis on maintaining broad social ties. LINE supports selective and carefully presented gifts, reflecting Japanese norms of formality and sincerity. In contrast, WeChat’s Hongbao feature enables playful, communal monetary exchanges that are largely separate from traditional, obligation-driven gift-giving. Based on these findings, we propose the Channel-Oriented Gifting Cycle to extend classical gift-exchange theory and offer design implications for culturally sensitive digital gifting services.