Understanding the effect of group emotions on consumer instant order cancellation behavior in livestreaming E-commerce: Empirical evidence from TikTok

Abstract

Livestreaming e-commerce (LSE) exhibits a noteworthy idiosyncrasy in the form of escalating instant order cancellations, wherein consumers swiftly revoke their purchases during livestreaming before receiving the products. This study leveraged the emotional contagion theory to construct an econometric model and investigate the factors influencing viewers' instant order cancellation behaviors. An extensive dataset was assembled, comprising 4984 product introduction video segments from 768 TikTok livestreaming rooms in China, along with 1.29 million bullet screen comments and 513,551 viewers' information. Employing advanced multimodal data processing technologies, the study extracted anchors' (livestreaming hosts) multimodal emotion features. The empirical findings demonstrate the significant impact of anchors' emotions, encompassing body movements, facial expressions, voices, and conversation contents, on the arousal and valence of group emotions, where the latter exhibit opposing effects on instant order cancellation behavior. This research establishes the paramount roles of anchor and group emotions in viewers' instant order cancellation behaviors, lending credence to the epistemological applicability of emotional contagion theory in the context of LSE. The study's findings offer LSE practitioners practical implications to enhance business decision-making, fostering more engaging and emotionally resonant livestreaming experiences to reduce cancellations and improve customer retention.