Can social interaction-oriented content trigger viewers' purchasing and gift-giving behaviors? Evidence from live-streaming commerce

Purpose - This study investigates how social interaction-oriented content in broadcasters' live speech affects broadcast viewers' purchasing and gift-giving behaviors and how broadcaster popularity moderates social interaction-oriented content's effect on the two different behaviors in live-streaming commerce. Design/methodology/approach - A research model was proposed and empirically tested using a panel data set collected from 537 live streams via Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok), one of the most popular live broadcast platforms in China. A fixed-effects negative binomial regression model was used to examine the proposed research model. Findings - This study's results show that social interaction-oriented content in broadcasters' live speech has an inverted U-shaped relationship with broadcast viewers' purchasing behavior and shares a positive linear relationship with viewers' gift-giving behavior. Furthermore, broadcaster popularity significantly moderates the effect of social interaction-oriented content on viewers' purchasing and gift-giving behaviors. Originality/value - This research enriches the literature on live-streaming commerce by investigating how social interaction-oriented content in broadcasters' live speech affects broadcast viewers' product-purchasing and gift-giving behaviors from the perspective of broadcast viewers' attention. Moreover, this study provides some practical guidelines for developing live speech content in the live-streaming commerce context.