Are Enjoyment and Appreciation Both Yardsticks of Popularity?

The current study adopts a broad-based model of media and audience values as well as recent understandings of enjoyment versus appreciation to predict that aggregate audience appraisals should be related to film budget, gross, and measures of viewership differently depending on the type of appraisal elicited. Data suggest both enjoyment and appreciation are positively related to measures of aggregate selective exposure when controlling for film budget. This finding challenges a view that appreciation is negatively related to success. Discussion centers on implications for understanding potential functional aspects of audience appraisals and suggests future research on audience morality and media production.