An Exploration of Motivations for Users Purchase Intention in Live-Streaming E-Commerce from a Perspective of Social Impact Theory

Live-streaming (LS) e-commerce has become popular since it appeared in China in 2019. In light of this, this research explored the motivations for peoples purchase intention in LS under the theoretical framework of the Social Impact Theory (SIT). 160 questionnaires were collected and analyzed. Additionally, relevant analysis on the platform Douyin was conducted. Results showed that streamers, other customers, and the LS platform contribute to affecting peoples purchase intention. Specifically speaking, the strength of streamers (how professional and popular they are) influences peoples trust; the number of other customers and their comments mediated peoples purchase intention; the immediacy of Douyin (how the platform makes the communication and purchase easier) also has an impact on the purchase intention