This is a multifaceted question. We don’t really know the answer to where people experience ASMR the most – would there be some regional differences?
We can only research how popular ASMR videos are in each country. This has been studied by e.g. Online Mattress Review and Google Consumer Insights.
ASMR seems to be popular in the same countries where YouTube and social media in general are popular: in the Western countries.
According to Online Mattress Review, here is the list of top 5 countries where people search for ASMR videos on YouTube most per capita:
- Brunei (in Oceania)
- Finland
- Iceland
- Sweden
- Norway
However, according to the same analysis, South Korea seems to be the country that produces the most popular ASMRtists.
Interestingly, India is not on the list for most ASMR searches even though it is the country with most YouTube users.
In conclusion, it’s impossible say where ASMR itself is the most popular. We can only analyze the online behavior in each country. Different research projects reveal different results depending on which media outlets or online platforms are analyzed, and which tools are used to get data from people’s search behavior.