Rationally Trust, but Emotionally? The Roles of Cognitive and Affective Trust in Consumer Imitation Intention Toward Influencers in Short-Form Live Commerce

This study examines how influencer characteristics and short-form video content characteristics shape consumers’ imitation intention toward influencers in short-form live commerce. Drawing on the stimulus–organism–response (S-O-R) framework and social learning theory, this study conceptualizes cognitive trust and affective trust as two internal psychological states linking external stimuli to imitation intention. Imitation intention is defined as consumers’ willingness to regard influencers as behavioral reference models and to adopt or follow their consumption choices, suggestions, and recommendations. Survey data were collected from 306 Chinese consumers of TikTok, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results show that ethics, homophily, authenticity, and entertainment significantly enhance both cognitive and affective trust, whereas originality significantly increases only cognitive trust and social attractiveness has no significant effect on either trust dimension. Cognitive trust also positively influences affective trust. Both trust dimensions significantly increase consumers’ imitation intention, with affective trust exerting the stronger effect. The mediation analysis further reveals both differentiated parallel and sequential trust pathways: cognitive trust mediates five of the six antecedent relationships, affective trust mediates four, and sequential mediation through cognitive trust and affective trust is significant for ethics, homophily, authenticity, originality, and entertainment. These findings show that trust operates through both distinct and interrelated mechanisms in translating influencer- and content-related cues into imitation intention.