Impacts of different interactive elements on consumers’ purchase intention in live streaming e-commerce

Live streaming e-commerce (LSE) has gained tremendous popularity as an innovative social commerce platform that integrates real-time interactions among customers, streamers, and operators to promote product sales. However, there is still much to be discovered about the factors that determine the success of LSE. The objective of this study is to examine the effects of diverse interactive elements, namely consumer-streamer, consumer-platform, and consumer-consumer interactions, on consumers' purchase intention from the perspectives of social presence and trust using the SOR theory. Additionally, we examine the moderating effects of susceptibility to informative influence on the relationship between different interactive elements and consumers' purchase intention. We collected survey data from 326 LSE consumers and a structural equation model was employed to evaluate our research hypotheses. Our results reveal that consumer-streamer interaction and consumer-consumer interaction positively influence consumers' purchase intention. Social presence mediates the relationship between the three types of interactions and consumers' purchase intention, while trust plays a mediator role in both consumer-streamer and consumer-consumer interactions that affect consumers' purchase intention. Susceptibility to informative influence has a significant positive moderating effect between consumer-streamer interaction and purchase intention. This study expands on current theoretical research regarding LSE and offers practical insights for operators in the field.