The Influences of Live Streaming Affordance in Cross-Border E-Commerce Platforms

Abstract

Despite the promise of cross-border e-commerce, attracting consumers is still a worldwide challenge. Many cross-border e-commerce platforms have responded to the challenges by embracing innovative tools like live streaming. However, there has been limited understandings of the unique nature of live streaming and its empirical influence. Taking an affordance view of live streaming, this study defines affordance of live streaming as the capacities provided by live streaming and examines how affordance of live streaming affect consumer behavior in the cross-border e-commerce context based on information transparency perspective. Results show that although live streaming does not directly affect consumers’ cross-border purchase intention, it can increase consumers’ purchase intention through increasing perceived information transparency. In addition, affordance of live streaming can further moderate the relationship between different types of information transparency and consumers’ cross-border purchase intention. The findings provide a much-needed contribution to academia and business.