Online opinion leadership styles and purchase intention in livestreaming e-commerce

As online opinion leaders and persuaders, livestreamers enable the widespread success of livestreaming e-commerce by substantially impacting viewers’ online purchase intention. Yet, extant studies have overlooked online opinion leadership styles exhibited by livestreamers and how these influence viewers’ online purchase intention. We explore this issue by developing a comprehensive framework of livestreamers’ online opinion leadership styles, comprising authentic, ethical, servant, and participative dimensions, based on both livestreaming and opinion leadership literature. Then, drawing on regulatory focus theory, the partial least square-structural equal modeling analysis of survey data collected from 321 Chinese viewers revealed that livestreamers with authentic and ethical online opinion leadership styles promote viewers’ prevention focus. Next, livestreamers with the servant and participative styles promote viewers’ promotion focus. Finally, viewers’ prevention and promotion focus propel their online purchase intention. Our findings contribute to the development of a comprehensive framework of online opinion leadership styles in computer-mediated livestreaming e-commerce.