This study investigates how herd behavior affects consumers’ consumption intention and continuous watching intention in live streaming e-commerce. We also consider how consumer–anchor interaction and consumer–consumer interaction moderate the effects of herd behavior on consumption intention and continuous watching intention. We specifically targeted users who watched Taobao live streaming to participate in our questionnaire, resulting in 296 valid responses. Our findings show that herd behavior positively affects consumption intention and continuous watching intention. Consumer–anchor interaction negatively moderates the link between herd behavior and both consumption intention and continuous watching intention. Consumer–consumer interaction positively moderates the relationship between herd behavior and consumption intention, but not the relationship between herd behavior and continuous watching intention. Furthermore, our findings show that herd behavior has a more pronounced impact on consumption intention than on continuous watching intention. Our results provide pertinent and beneficial implications for anchors, online merchants and platforms.

The surge in popularity of e-commerce live streaming is evident among sellers and consumers. However, a holistic examination of the influencing factors of consumers’ purchase intention from the perspective of social and technical systems is still limited. Utilizing the socio-technical systems theory, we investigate the effects of social and technical system factors on consumers’ flow experience and how flow affects consumer purchase intention in the live streaming setting. Furthermore, we identify how optimal stimulation level moderates the relationship between socio-technical system factors and flow. Empirical results (N = 355) indicate that flow can be strengthened through social system factors (financial bonds, social bonds) and technical system factors (visibility, guidance shopping), consequently affecting consumer purchase intention. In terms of the moderating effects, the optimal stimulation level positively moderates the relationships between social bonds, visibility, guidance shopping, and flow.

This paper constructs a risk reduction model based on signalling theory to investigate how the platform- and user-oriented signals affect perceived risks, which in turn affect users’ actual engagement and purchase behaviours in social commerce. The moderating effects of perceived effectiveness of social commerce institutional mechanisms (PESIM) on the relationships between signals and perceived risks are also considered. Longitudinal data from 226 users of Xiaohongshu were collected to test the proposed hypotheses. We identify signals oriented from platforms and users significantly influence users’ perceptions of commerce and participation risks. We also demonstrate that commerce and participation risks influence users’ actual engagement and purchase behaviours, respectively. Furthermore, we also verify that PESIM negatively moderates the relationship between signals and perceived risk.

Organizations can tap the wisdom of the crowd through digital platforms of crowdsourcing for ideation. However, we have limited understanding of factors affecting the innovativeness of ideas and solutions submitted by individual participants. Drawing upon self-determination theory and regulatory focus theory, we investigate how participants' regulatory focus and extrinsic motivation aroused by incentivizing mechanisms affect their creativity in crowdsourcing communities. Based on the data collected from 164 participants in a crowdsourcing platform, we find that promotion focus positively influences participants' creativity, and different types of extrinsic motivation have differential effects. Although external, identified, and integrated motivation positively affect participants' creativity, introjected motivation is not significantly related to participants' creativity. In addition, external and identified motivation strengthen the relationship between promotion focus and creativity. The theoretical contributions and managerial implications of this study are discussed.