Emotional Attachment in Social E-Commerce: The Role of Social Capital and Peer Influence

Abstract

As competition in the social e-commerce industry intensifies, building high-quality relationships with users to increase customer loyalty and gain sustainable competitive advantage is important for platforms. Based on the perspective of social capital, this paper constructs a relationship model of “social capital-peer influence-emotional attachment” based on Red Booklet and Poizon users and explores the influence and mechanism of social capital on emotional attachment in the context of social e-commerce. Social capital has a significant positive effect on peer influence and emotional attachment, while peer influence has a significant positive effect on emotional attachment and partially mediates the relationship between social capital and emotional attachment. This study provides practical insights from the perspective of “social capital” for enterprises to improve the users’ emotional attachment to the platform and further develop themselves in the social e-commerce environment.