What Motivates Consumers’ Purchase Intentions in E-Commerce Live Streaming: A Socio-Technical Perspective

Abstract

The surge in popularity of e-commerce live streaming is evident among sellers and consumers. However, a holistic examination of the influencing factors of consumers’ purchase intention from the perspective of social and technical systems is still limited. Utilizing the socio-technical systems theory, we investigate the effects of social and technical system factors on consumers’ flow experience and how flow affects consumer purchase intention in the live streaming setting. Furthermore, we identify how optimal stimulation level moderates the relationship between socio-technical system factors and flow. Empirical results (N = 355) indicate that flow can be strengthened through social system factors (financial bonds, social bonds) and technical system factors (visibility, guidance shopping), consequently affecting consumer purchase intention. In terms of the moderating effects, the optimal stimulation level positively moderates the relationships between social bonds, visibility, guidance shopping, and flow.

Keywords:

• Live streaming
• purchase intention
• socio-technical systems
• flow
• optimal stimulation level

Ethical approval and consent to participate

Each participant has read and signed the informed consent form. All data collected from the participants were kept anonymous and confidential to protect the privacy of the participants.

Consent for publication

All authors approve the manuscript for publication.

Authors’ contributions

Man Ji: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing-original draft. Xiayu Chen: Conceptualization, Methodology, Visualization, Writing-review & editing. Shaobo Wei: Conceptualization, Supervision, Resources, Writing-review & editing

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Data availability statement

Data will be made available on request.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [72271072, 72071190], and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [JZ2023HGPA0294].

Notes on contributors

Man Ji

Man Ji is a Ph.D. Candidate in School of Management at the Hefei University of Technology. Her research focuses on the e-commerce and social media. She has published papers in journals such as Electronic Commerce Research.

Xiayu Chen

Xiayu Chen is an Associate Professor in the School of Management at the Hefei University of Technology. She has published papers in journals such as Journal of Operations Management, Decision Sciences, Information Systems Journal, and Journal of Information Technology.

Shaobo Wei

Shaobo Wei is a Professor in the School of Management at the Hefei University of Technology. He has published papers in journals such as Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Decision Sciences, Journal of Information Technology, and Information & Management.