Impacts of Bullet-Screen Content and Behavioral Characteristics on Consumer Purchasing Behavior in Live Streaming E-Commerce: Moderating Effect of Streamer-Product Relevance

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of bullet-screen content and behavioral characteristics on consumer purchasing behavior in live streaming e-commerce, as well as the moderating effect of streamer-product relevance. Based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), this paper uses bullet-screen data from the Douyin platform and consumer data from the Huitun platform. By combining text mining with zero-inflated negative binomial regression, this paper investigates the factors influencing consumer purchasing behavior from two perspectives: bullet-screen content characteristics as the central route and behavioral characteristics as the peripheral route. Grouped regression analysis is further employed to examine the moderating role of streamer-product relevance. Information richness, social interaction degree, and the number of bullet-screen comments positively affect purchasing behavior. The effect of the sentiment polarity of bullet-screen comments on purchasing behavior follows an inverted U-shaped pattern. Compared with live streaming rooms with low streamer-product relevance, those with high streamer-product relevance exhibit a broader range over which the sentiment polarity of bullet-screen comments positively affects purchasing behavior. This paper selects bullet-screen comments from only one live streaming e-commerce platform, and its findings therefore lack generalizability. Analyzing the factors influencing consumers’actual purchasing behavior from the perspective of bullet-screen comments can provide practical guidance and recommendations for effective communication between merchants and consumers and for improving sales effectiveness under the live streaming e-commerce model.

Keywords

live streaming e-commerce / purchasing behavior / streamer-product relevance / bullet-screen characteristics / Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

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Higher Education Press