The Effect of Herd Behavior on Consumer Intention in Live Streaming E-Commerce: The Moderating Role of Interaction

Abstract

This study investigates how herd behavior affects consumers’ consumption intention and continuous watching intention in live streaming e-commerce. We also consider how consumer–anchor interaction and consumer–consumer interaction moderate the effects of herd behavior on consumption intention and continuous watching intention. We specifically targeted users who watched Taobao live streaming to participate in our questionnaire, resulting in 296 valid responses. Our findings show that herd behavior positively affects consumption intention and continuous watching intention. Consumer–anchor interaction negatively moderates the link between herd behavior and both consumption intention and continuous watching intention. Consumer–consumer interaction positively moderates the relationship between herd behavior and consumption intention, but not the relationship between herd behavior and continuous watching intention. Furthermore, our findings show that herd behavior has a more pronounced impact on consumption intention than on continuous watching intention. Our results provide pertinent and beneficial implications for anchors, online merchants and platforms.

Keywords:

• Herd behavior
• consumption intention
• continuous watching intention
• consumer–anchor interaction
• consumer–consumer interaction

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.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72271072 and 72071190) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (JZ2023HGPA0294).

Notes on contributors

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.

Yu Wang

Yu Wang is a master student in the School of Management at the Hefei University of Technology. Her research interest is live-streaming e-commerce.

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.

Junya Shen

Junya Shen is a PhD Candidate in the School of Management at the Hefei University of Technology. Her research focuses on electronic commerce and social media. She has published papers in journals such as Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services.