How attachment affects user stickiness on live streaming platforms: A socio-technical approach perspective

Abstract User stickiness is an important factor in the development of live streaming shopping platforms, which describes the degree of users' attention to the platforms. Although some e-commerce websites have provided live streaming services to improve the purchase experience of consumers, few people know how the services affect user stickiness. Building upon attachment theory and socio-technical approach, we developed a theoretical model to understand how live streaming service affects the user stickiness through users' attachment, which is tested by using 425 live streaming shopping platform's users. The results showed that technical factors (synchronicity and vicarious expression) and social factors (interaction and identification) positively affect emotional attachment to streamers and platform attachment respectively, which in turn increase the user stickiness.