Factors driving consumers' impulsive buying in live streaming e-commerce under the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

People's daily actions and lifestyles have changed imperceptibly under the COVID-19 pandemic. More people chose live streaming e-commerce to avoid the risk of infection, but impulsive buying happened more frequently. In this work, we studied systematically the factors and mechanisms that influenced consumers' impulsive purchase in live streaming e-commerce based on C-A-B theory via a three-level conceptual framework. An online survey using purposive sampling had been completed by 505 respondents in China and the results were analyzed by partial least squares structural equation modeling. It has been proved that environmental cognitions and consumers’ emotions positively influenced their urge to buy impulsively. Furthermore, the normative evaluation was proposed to moderate the internal relationship between consumers’ emotional state and impulsive buying. As live streaming e-commerce is in its infancy stage, this study could provide both live streaming broadcasters and consumers with insights concerning consumers’ urge to buy impulsively.