Live Streaming Platforms Research Articles

Mukbang Live Streaming Commerce and Green Agri-Food Products Consumption: Exploring the New Dynamics of Consumer Purchasing Decisions

China’s live streaming boom has led to mukbang live streaming as a unique food marketing tool. Hosts interact with viewers by tasting and showcasing diverse cuisines in real time. This form of mukbang live streaming has recently been utilized to promote and sell green agri-food products. However, in-depth research into how mukbang live streaming affects the purchase intention for green agri-food products and the underlying mechanisms remains scant. We developed a theoretical model based on stimuli–organism–response theory to explore the impact mechanism. Data was collected via a survey of 455 users from agriculture-related live streaming platforms and analyzed using structural equation modeling with partial least squares. The study found that professional recommendation, audiovisual experience, and social interaction enhance consumers’ perceived utilitarian value; green advocacy, audiovisual experience, and social interaction positively affect consumers’ perceived social value. Both perceived utilitarian value and perceived social value positively affect the intention to purchase green agri-food products. Additionally, we used importance-performance map analysis to compare the model’s effects with latent variable averages, revealing each factor’s importance and performance. The findings offer new insights and recommendations for agri-food marketing strategies, particularly in enhancing consumer behaviors towards green agri-food products, aiding suppliers and mukbang live streaming platforms in more effectively promoting these products.

From Clicks to Carts: Examining the Mediating Role of Attachment in the Relationship Between Influencers and Consumer Purchase Intentions on Live Streaming Platforms

Internet celebrities are rapidly reshaping economics and marketing dynamics on online platforms such as live streaming. This trend has made influencers a crucial marketing technique for many businesses. This study focuses on influencers and their characteristics, engaging in a comprehensive discussion of their complex relationships. It hypothesizes that the three key characteristics of celebrity influencers—similarity, professionalism, and interactivity—directly influence attachment and purchase intention. Additionally, the research explores how attachment mediates the relationship between influencer factors and purchase intention on live streaming platforms. A cross-sectional design and statistical analysis were employed, using a sample of 130 online consumers. The results suggest that similarity, professionalism, and interactivity directly effect on purchase intention. However, while professionalism and interactivity have a direct effect on attachment, they do not significantly influence the relationship with similarity. However, when mediated through attachment, similarity gets partially mediated whereas professionalism and interactivity have observed full mediation. The total effect is highest for similarity. Overall, the study found attachment to be a significant mediator among these influencer characteristics. These findings suggest that celebrities, product developers, advertisers, and online platform owners need to prioritize influencer credibility and competency to succeed in online marketing through live streaming platforms. This study provides new insights into marketing approaches, contributing to the field of consumer behaviour research both practically and theoretically.

Key Factors in Virtual Gift Buying Behaviour in the Live Game Category Streaming: A Social Cognitive and Cultural Perspective

As live streaming based on a variety of content is growing globally, viewers are becoming accustomed to a model that allows them to interact with content creators in real time; as a result, commercialization businesses based on live streaming are proliferating. These commercialization businesses include live-streaming platforms offering virtual gifts that viewers can purchase to give to content creators, purchasing a streamer's fan badge to show continued support for the streamer, or purchasing merchandise from the streamer's merchandise window, among others. Among them, virtual gifts are the paying behaviour with the highest percentage of viewers. Based on this background, studying what influences consumers' decisions about virtual gifts is essential. This paper adopts a literature review approach to analyze several academic literatures as well as identify the key factors, social, cultural, and psychological, of virtual gift purchasing behaviours of consumers in the live gaming industry, and comb through the key findings of these current studies. In addition, this paper also proposes future research directions and relevant suggestions for specific practices based on the above factors, providing ideas and references for researchers and practitioners of virtual gift marketing. Due to the diverse perspectives of existing related research, the integration, analysis and recommendations in this paper will be of significance to future researchers and stakeholders in systematically understanding viewer behaviour, helping the function of virtual gift rewards on live broadcasting platforms in China, and enhancing the economic benefits as well as live broadcasting viewers' experience.

The configurational impact of e-commerce live streaming interactivity on consumer engagement behavior

PurposeThis study aimed to verify the impact of e-commerce live streaming interactivity on consumer engagement behavior. Specifically, the multiple dimensions of interactivity and tie strength together form a high-level consumer engagement behavior.Design/methodology/approachData collection was carried out in the form of a questionnaire survey. Data from 416 respondents were analyzed by structural, followed by further test by fsQCA method.FindingsPerceived controllability, perceived responsiveness and perceived mutuality positively influence tie strength, and tie strength promotes consumer engagement behavior. Moreover, we found a configuration effect between interactivity and tie strength and revealed four configurations that can affect high-level engagement behavior.Research limitations/implicationsFirst, the SEM results show that the three dimensions of perceived interactivity positively impact tie strength: perceived controllability, perceived responsiveness, and perceived mutuality. And perceived personalization has no positive impact on tie strength. Second, the relevant results show that tie strength positively impacts consumer engagement behavior. Third, we find that the relationship between perceived interactivity and consumer engagement behavior may not be asymmetric, so the alternative combination of causal conditions may produce the same results. The fsQCA results revealed four configurations that can affect the level of consumer engagement behavior. And tie strength is the core condition.Practical implicationsThis study provides specific solutions for e-retailers and live streaming platforms to promote consumers' participation in engagement behavior in e-commerce live streaming.Originality/valueThis study transforms the linear impact of interactivity on consumer engagement behavior into a configuration effect for the first time, and enriches the live streaming commerce and consumer engagement behavior literature.

Relationships among para-social interaction, perceived benefits, community commitment, and customer citizenship behavior: Evidence from a social live-streaming platform

Encouraging online consumers to participate in the value enhancement process of products and stimulating users to engage in spontaneous and voluntary behaviors, the so-called Customer Citizenship Behaviors (CCBs), can significantly contribute to enhancing the competitiveness of online communities. Nowadays, there has been no systematic discussion on enhancing product value through value co-creation. Based on the Social Exchange Theory (SET), and take the current new type of online community, the social live-streaming community, as the research object, this study investigates how Para-social Interaction (PSI) between users and streamers affects users' perceived benefits, whether perceived benefits are related to users' community commitment and the relationship between community commitment and CCB from the perspective of value co-creation. Three hundred and forty-seven valid samples from China were obtained using TikTok and subsequently analyzed via Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The analysis results show that PSI positively influences users' perceived benefits, and among the perceived benefits, hedonic and self-esteem benefits can positively influence users' community commitment. When users' community commitment to live-streamers exists, it can effectively incentivize users to develop CCB. Theoretically, research findings enrich the study of online community value co-creation, para-social interaction, and citizenship behavior and provide recommendations for operating social live-streaming platforms.

Scalable intimacy: Rethinking intimate sociality and its problem of scale in digital China

With the development of the Internet in China, people have increasingly turned to digital communication and networking tools for personal connections and social relations. From messaging and dating apps to microblogging and live-streaming platforms, mediated forms of sociality constitute a significant part of people’s intimate lives. Scholarly works on modern and contemporary China have shown how practices and politics of intimacy are formulated and contested against the backdrop of the tensions between the residual culture of Confucianism, the socialist ideological regime, and China’s participation in global capitalism. On the contrary, research on global network societies has foregrounded the role of information and media technologies in mediating intimacy with conceptual frameworks such as programmed sociality and networked intimacy. Bridging these two areas of research, this essay attempts to understand how intimate sociality is configured within China’s burgeoning digital economy and culture. It first provides a review of previous works on forms of intimacy and sociality mediated by network technologies ranging from mobile phones to online dating. Using the popularity of live streaming in current-day China as a case study, this essay then introduces the problem of “scale” to consider how intimacy is mediated at scale with Internet-based media technologies and discuss how scalability shapes intimate lives in Chinese society as a shared rationale behind modernization, network technologies, and new forms of economies. This essay proposes the concept of scalable intimacy to move beyond the platform-centered approach and develop a more contextualized framework for understanding intimate sociality in digital China.

이스포츠 프로리그 경기관람속성이 방문관람의도에 미치는 영향: 계획된 행동이론을 중심으로

With the continuous evolution of various IT technologies such as live streaming platforms and the metaverse, e-sports (electronic sports) have witnessed sustained growth. Notably, e-sports have been formally recognized as a discipline in the Hangzhou Asian Games, reflecting their increasing popularity in China. This study employs the Theory of Planned Behavior to empirically analyze how viewing attributes of e-sports league games influence the intention of Chinese spectators to attend events in person. Data from 391 respondents were collected and analyzed for this purpose. The empirical findings highlight six key viewing attributes: cost, game content, escapism, fan service, additional facilities, and related tourism. Among these attributes, game content, escapism, and additional facilities emerge as significant influencers of spectator attitudes, thereby impacting their intention to attend events in person. Moreover, spectator attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control are identified as significant factors affecting the intention to attend in person. In conclusion, enhancing the quality of game programming and providing opportunities for escapism are critical. Additionally, expanding supplementary facilities to accommodate in-person attendance is recommended. These insights provide foundational data for optimizing the organization of e-sports leagues and enhancing visitor experiences in the region. Furthermore, they can inform strategic improvements in e-sports viewing services, fostering continued growth in the industry.

Unveiling the optimal configuration of impulsive buying behavior using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis and multi-criteria decision approach

Sudden and unplanned purchasing behavior is considered impulsive buying behavior. With the increasing popularity of social commerce platforms and shopping automation, people's tendency towards impulsive purchases has grown significantly. In this connection, the role of marketing influencers has crucially impacted the customers' purchasing decisions over the last decade. This study aims to investigate the effect of marketing influencers on impulsive buying behavior. In addition, the current study addresses a critical methodological problem by highlighting the optimal configuration provided by fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) using a multi-criteria decision approach (MCDM). Based on a survey of 672 users of live streaming commerce platforms in Malaysia, we examined impulsive buying behavior from the perspective of influencer marketing, cognitive trust, and affective trust in influencer. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) results confirmed the influence of parasocial relationship, authenticity, expertise, trustworthiness, attractiveness, and influencer–follower congruence on impulsive buying behavior through cognitive trust in influencer, affective trust in influencer, and behavioral inertia. The fsQCA results provided 15 different configurations confirming the role of marketing influencers' characteristics in impulsive buying behavior. However, fsQCA analysis is unable to determine the optimal solution or configuration. To this end, the MCDM analysis complemented the fsQCA analysis by unveiling the optimal configuration, which was the ninth configuration. Furthermore, the combination of authenticity, expertise, trustworthiness, cognitive trust, affective trust is considered a key concept to increase impulsive buying behaviour regardless of the presence of a parasocial relationship.

Beyond livestreaming: The rise of social media gifting and paid memberships − A systematic literature review and future research agenda

Paid memberships and gifts are increasingly implemented in social media as content monetization functions. Here, we outline the overarching trend toward gifting and membership functions, develop a theoretical framework of stakeholder dynamics, summarize changes on major platforms, and conduct a systematic review of the literature investigating this development. We analyze 76 articles published across 51 journals using the Theory, Characteristics, Context, and Methodology framework and find that the research has primarily focused on livestreaming gifting but has neglected paid memberships and gift-giving outside of livestreaming platforms. Moreover, the research has largely neglected the role of platforms and how they can optimize gifting and membership functions to increase revenue. Based on our findings, we give an overview of the most pressing research questions and develop a comprehensive research agenda.

Research on factors affecting the purchase intention on TikTok live stream of students in Hanoi: A SOR model approach

Vietnam has recently witnessed a strong development of social commerce. After the COVID-19 pandemic, e-commerce live streaming rose dramatically to become a phenomenal presence in the live streaming industry. More and more consumers, especially young people in the Vietnamese market are participating in e-commerce live streaming platforms for online shopping since purchasing goods via live stream is not only to satisfy personal needs but also to entertain customers. Significantly, live interaction has opened a new era for brands and businesses to reach customers during Industry 4.0. This study aimed to analyze factors affecting purchase intention on the TikTok live stream of students in Hanoi city based on theories and results obtained from previous studies. The primary data from a survey of 186 students was analyzed by using structural equation modeling (SEM). Findings revealed that five factors were identified to have a positive influence on purchase intention, including live streamer’s attractiveness, price perception, scarcity persuasion, flow experience, and perceived value. Thereby, the research team proposed several solutions and recommendations for stakeholders in the investment and development of social commerce to build a system of factors and methods to help convert viewers into buyers on TikTok live stream in particular and on the Internet and other live broadcasting platforms in general.

The Landscape of Sexual Harm in the Video Game, Streaming, and Esports Community.

While sexual harm has been studied across a range of contexts, it has not yet been considered within the video game, streaming, and esports community. This study aimed to explore the landscape of sexual harm in this community, specifically, where it has been committed by esports professionals and video game live streamers. Fifty-five victim statements were extracted from online sources (such as Twitter/X and Reddit) and coded into variables relating to offender and victim demographics, offense characteristics, the offense process, and platform(s) used. Descriptive statistics were generated for each variable and Fisher's exact tests were conducted to examine the differences between adult-on-adult and adult-on-child cases. The findings reveal diverse offense outcomes across the sample, ranging from rape to sexual communication with a child. Some offense patterns can be seen in wider sexual offending literature, such as pre-offense alcohol consumption, offending against incapacitated victims (e.g., sleeping), and offending within an established romantic relationship. However, several offense process characteristics unique to the video gaming community were identified. These included offenders using their position of fame within the community to access victims and bypass the need for other coercive behaviors. Online offenses were more common with children and offenders demonstrated a preference for "live" methods, such as voice chat and video calling, rather than instant messaging or sharing images of themselves. This limits the digital evidence left behind and indicates the offenders' greater technological literacy. The study's findings shed light on the sexual harm that exists within this previously unexplored context and highlight areas where esports organizations, live-streaming platforms, and educational providers can do more to safeguard players, fans, and viewers in this community.

Study of the influence of psychological factors on women’s purchasing decisions during e-commerce livestream

Apart from YouTube and Instagram, new e-commerce live streaming platforms have emerged (TikTok Shopping, Amazon Live), which opens new opportunities for engaging with the audience and driving sales. Women, looking for an emotional and interactive experience, tend to make impulse purchases during live broadcasts. That is why it is necessary to investigate this topic. The purpose of this study was to examine the psychological factors that influence women’s impulse purchases while watching live broadcasts and to determine the psychological characteristics of women who make impulse purchases during live broadcasts. The study included questionnaires and interviews with women living in the Philippines, East Timor, Thailand, Singapore, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Laos. The key findings are that the study revealed the psychological factors of influence and psychological characteristics of women as they make purchases during e-commerce live streams. Psychological characteristics include emotionality while watching (68.3% of respondents), fear of missing out on a good deal (58.3% of respondents) and being influenced by other viewers and streamers (74.2% trust recommendations). Psychological factors include a set of technological and social components. Technological factors include interactivity and real-time communication (56.7% consider it significant); visual appeal and product display (71.7% consider it significant); and the convenience of shopping while browsing. Social factors include parasocial interaction with the streamer, a sense of community with other viewers (63.3%). The study also identified the role of hosts, which plays a significant role in building trust in the product and online platform: building trust in the product and brand (74.2% trust recommendations); influence through charisma, expertise, and attractiveness (62.5% consider them attractive, 58.3% – competent). Live broadcasts effectively stimulate impulse purchases among women. Emotions, trust, and social influence play a key role in this process. The practical significance of this study lies in the possibility of helping women to better understand the factors that influence impulse purchases, to avoid the influence of emotional stimuli and social pressure. The findings of this study can be used to develop recommendations on how people can effectively shop online

Research on the motivation for viewer addiction to live streaming: a cross-cultural investigation of China and the USA

PurposeWith the increasing popularity of live streaming, the exploration of online behaviors on live streaming platforms has become a research hot spot in academia. However, the literature lacks cross-cultural investigations into live streaming addictive (LSA) behaviors among viewers. To address this gap, based on stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory and motivation theory, this study investigates how information seeking, sensation seeking and community commitment (stimulus) affect hedonic and utilitarian motivation (organism), which in turn influence viewers’ LSA behaviors (response). This study also compares American and Chinese viewers to understand how LSA behaviors differ across national cultures.Design/methodology/approachWe surveyed live stream viewers in both nations, collecting 758 valid samples including 377 Chinese respondents and 381 American respondents for use with the research model. A partial least squares (PLS) approach is employed for data analysis.FindingsThe results show that information seeking increases utilitarian motivation, sensation seeking increases hedonic motivation, and community commitment strengthens both hedonic and utilitarian motivation. Both hedonic motivation and utilitarian motivation positively affect LSA behaviors. In addition, based on cross-cultural analysis, we found that there was a significant mediating path common to the respondents in China and the USA (i.e. sensation seeking ? Hedonic motivation ? LSA).Originality/valueThe findings of this study make theoretical contributions to live streaming research and offer practical guidance for live streaming firms to formulate proper marketing strategies. Last, this study outlines several limitations and possible directions for future research.

Do Psychological Ownership and Communicative Presence Matter? Examining How User-Generated Content in E-Commerce Live Streaming Influences Consumers' Purchase Intention.

E-commerce live streaming has become a lucrative global industry. As the main carrier to convey information in live broadcasting, user-generated content (UGC)-and especially bullet screens-are crucial in influencing users' purchase intentions. However, the influence of bullet screens' multidimensional information characteristics on consumers' decision-making processes requires further exploration. Additionally, most existing studies start with the short-term effects of live product realization, and must address how to enhance customers' psychological ownership using new means of live streaming marketing to obtain long-term sustainable brand-building effects. This study introduces psychological ownership and the communicative presence as mediating variables based on the theory of elaboration likelihood modeling to explore the mechanism of the influence of UGC's multidimensional features on viewers' purchase intentions in live e-commerce broadcasting rooms. We collected 404 valid online questionnaires and tested our hypotheses using structural equation modeling. These findings indicate that UGC emotions, quality, and their interaction significantly and positively affect purchase intentions. Moreover, psychological ownership and the communicative presence mediate UGC's effect on purchase intentions. These results provide a new perspective for understanding consumer behavior in live e-commerce to improve marketing effectiveness of e-commerce live streaming platforms.

E-Commerce Live Streaming Danmaku Classification Through LDA-Enhanced BERT-TextCNN Model

With the increasing popularity of e-commerce live streaming, comprehensive analysis of live barrage text has become increasingly crucial. This study presents a thematic analysis method for categorizing e-commerce live streaming barrage text using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling, combined with the advantages of the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) and TextCNN models. The LDA algorithm is initially used to extract topics from the barrage text, and then a dataset comprising six designated categories is assembled. Subsequently, a BERT-TextCNN hybrid model is trained, merging BERT's profound semantic comprehension with TextCNN's ability to extract local features. Empirical evidence shows that the proposed model notably improves classification accuracy and efficiency, providing valuable theoretical and practical insights for crafting strategies and optimizing user experience on e-commerce live streaming platforms.

Analysis and Governance Strategies of Online Gambling Crimes under New Live Streaming: Taking Lottery Games as an Example

With the development of multimedia technology and the increasing popularity of online live streaming, new forms of online gambling crimes using online live streaming platforms for game live streaming have also emerged, and new operating modes and criminal methods have been used. This gambling method involves certain game anchors using their online popularity, as well as the trust of some fans and their viewers in their anchors during live broadcasts, to attract viewers to participate in gambling through various means and gimmicks. This new type of network under game live streaming involves various factors such as law, technology, and regulation. Live streaming platforms, hosts, and users who watch live broadcasts must strictly abide by laws and regulations. Government regulatory departments also need to strengthen their supervision of whether gambling is involved in the field of online live streaming, protect the legitimate rights and interests of the public, and maintain a healthy and orderly online environment.

The Effect of eWOM and Webcare on Customer Engagement and Brand Loyalty toward Live Streaming Platforms

Based on the negative electronic word of mouth (NeWOM) under the live streaming platform, the paper aims to explore the mechanism of proactive and reactive webcare on customer brand loyalty. We constructed three separate experiments with no webcare, proactive webcare, and reactive webcare in response to NeWOM during the live streaming platform. In this study, 210 valid questionnaires were collected for statistical analysis, including the Mann-Whitney U test and Pearson correlation analysis. Our findings reveal that proactive and reactive webcare positively influence cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement, with proactive webcare demonstrating greater effectiveness. We confirm a positive correlation between these forms of engagement and brand loyalty, highlighting the strong connection between behavioral engagement and brand loyalty. At the same time, this study provides crucial inspiration for the live-streaming platform managers to focus on providing proactive webcare and develop behavioral activities in live-steaming platforms to enhance customers’ brand loyalty.

Examining the Use of DanMu for Crowdsourcing Control in Virtual Gatherings

The advent of web-based interactive technologies has opened up new possibilities for virtual gatherings in 3D environments. Live-streaming, in particular, has gained increasing attention due to its effectiveness in engaging a large number of users in collective online activities. With an emphasis on audience participation, live-streaming shares common characteristics of the outlook of the metaverse and is driving new waves of interaction in virtual gatherings, such as engaging users through crowdsourcing control. However, this type of social interaction has not been examined in the Asian context, and it lacks systematic investigation of user experience with different crowdsourcing control methods. In this paper, we present a novel crowdsourcing control method based on DanMu, the subtitle system of Bilibili, one of the most successful and prevalent live-streaming platforms in Asia. We organized virtual gatherings by live-streaming a Minecraft virtual campus and examined the use of DanMu for crowdsourcing control. Our first study investigated the influence of three crowdsourcing control methods (First Come First Served, Vote, and Super Command) on collective navigation task efficiency and user experience. These influences were further discussed with user activeness and group sizes in a follow-up study. The results showed that Super Command, a representative mode on top of the democratic voting mechanism, offers better user experiences and social richness in large groups. Participants also rated its usability higher in small groups. Besides, virtual gathering in small groups allows greater pragmatic quality, usability, and a sense of agency than in large groups. Our work provides design guidelines for developers and HCI practitioners to develop crowdsourcing control methods and improve novel virtual gathering experiences in virtual worlds and the future metaverse.

Parents’ effects on Chinese students’ digital entrepreneurship motivation on live streaming platforms: regional perspective using multi-group analysis

Purpose This paper aims to explore the effects of parents’ support factors on Chinese university students’ digital entrepreneurship motivation on live streaming platforms. Based on the Social support theory, this study divides influencing factors into emotional, instrumental, informational and appraisal aspects. Meanwhile, considering the impact of China’s regional differences, the paper refers to the Regional difference theory and performs a multi-group analysis to assess the differences based on Chinese university students’ regional backgrounds. Design/methodology/approach By testing 556 samples based on the partial least squares path modelling and variance-based structural equation modelling, all support factors parents provide can stimulate Chinese university students’ digital entrepreneurship motivation. Findings Based on the multi-group comparison, parents’ informational support exerts a more substantial influence on the digital entrepreneurship motivation for university students from central and east regions rather than those from the western region, and parents’ instrumental support exerts a lower influence on digital entrepreneurship motivation for east university students than for west university students. Originality/value This paper applies the Social support theory as a theoretical framework to divide the impact factors, and it uses the Regional difference theory as a guide for the multi-group analysis of correlations, which is significant for online entrepreneurial motivation research and a better understanding of student groups. In addition to testing the hypotheses, the study also measures the importance–performance map analysis to explore additional findings of influencing factors and discuss managerial implications.

Impact of the propensity to cross-cultural adaptation on online viewers' attitudes toward ethnic minority group cultural streaming: An extension of the theory of planned behaviour

Although more and more ethnic minority group (EMG) users are willing to present cultural content on live streaming platforms and advertise cultural products, the influence of their cultural content is still weak compared to mainstream culture. To narrow the research gap, it is essential for the current study to analyse online viewers' intention to watch EMGs' cultural content. This paper extends the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) model based on the cross-cultural adaptation theory. It adds the propensity to cross-cultural adaptation factor and cross-cultural adaptation factor, aiming to clearly explain online viewers' psychological changes. The data analysis based on the partial least squares path modelling and variance-based structural equation modelling (PLS- SEM) supports that the propensity to cross-cultural adaptation positively affects online viewers' cross-cultural adaptation. Meanwhile, the cross-cultural adaptation will positively influence online viewers' attitudes towards EMG cultural streaming, motivate their watching intention, and drive their final behavioural responses. More findings are uncovered via the importance-performance map analysis (IPMA), and the cross-cultural adaptation factor has significantly high performance and importance for online viewers’ watching intention.