Exploring message sidedness on purchase intention in live streaming e-commerce: the moderation of live streamer type

Purpose Live streaming e-commerce (LSE) is proliferating and has attracted great interest from practitioners and researchers. However, it is still unclear that how the persuasive language affects consumers’ judgment that shapes purchase decisions. Based on the theories of attribution and signal, this study aims to explore the influences of message sidedness on purchase intention and the moderation roles of live streamer types. Design/methodology/approach A 2 × 2 factorial randomized experiment was conducted to empirically test the proposed research hypothesis. 164 participants were recruited and randomly assigned to four conditions. MANOVA and PLS analysis were used. Findings The results showed that the live streamer type moderates the impact of message sidedness on purchase intention through the underlying mechanisms of perceived credibility and perceived uncertainty. Specifically, the message sidedness of a key opinion leader-hosted LSE (KLSE), has a stronger impact than that of the store self-built LSE (SLSE). Originality/value This study enriches the live streaming e-commerce literature in two aspects. On the one hand, it is among the first ones to elucidate the importance of language features of streamers for purchase decision and uncover the underlying mechanisms of perceived credibility and perceived uncertainty. On the other hand, this study also demonstrates the moderation role of live streamer types and enriches the contextual understanding on language features for purchase decision.