The Mechanism Influencing Impulsive Buying Behavior in Live Streaming Commerce: From the Perspectives of Live Streaming Characteristics and Consumers’ Psychological States

Abstract

Live streaming commerce (LSC) has received extensive attention from both academic and business communities around the world since its rapid growth in user numbers and market size in recent years. However, there are still gaps regarding current practical problems, such as declining industrial profitability and anchors’ improper emotional control, as well as the lack of relevant theoretical studies. This study, based on the stimulus-organism-response model and incorporating the theory of social presence and the theory of emotional contagion, constructs a new research framework to explore the impact of LSC characteristics (including consumer and anchor interaction, consumer and consumer interaction, anchor’s positive emotion, and anchor’s negative emotion) on social presence, emotional contagion, and impulsive buying behavior (IBB). This study uses Smart PLS to analyze data collected from Chinese LSC users. This method is suitable for testing complex relationship models that include multiple latent variables and mediating effects. According to the analysis of 442 valid questionnaires, this study shows that social presence and emotional contagion are key factors driving consumers’ impulsive buying behavior. Consumer and anchor interaction enhances both consumers’ social presence and emotional contagion, while consumer and consumer interaction does not. Furthermore, anchors’ positive emotion positively influences emotional contagion. Surprisingly, even negative anchor emotions also have a positive effect on emotional contagion. These findings enrich the existing literature on the driving mechanisms of IBB in the context of LSC. It provides practical implications for improving the management of the LSC industry, while also offering feasible suggestions and valuable references to address current problems.