Research On Fans' Ego-involvement Of E-commerce Livestreaming

During the outbreak of COVID-19,the public was restricted by geographic segregation,and lots of offline stores affected by the epidemic collapsed.The economic gloom was relieved by a thriving industry "e-commerce livestreaming" which meets consumers' demand,whereas real economy business remains sluggish.Government Work Report 2020 pointed out that new commercial activities such as e-commerce livestreaming and online services play an increasingly greater role against the recession,so that new policies must be introduced in order to work out "Internet plus" strategy.E-commerce livestreaming provides a fresh impetus to Chinese economic recovery.Therefore,scholars have been fired with enthusiasm for the project.In the academic realm,scholars generally believe that fan economy is invaluable for online marketing,but heretofore how individual fans are involved in e-commerce livestreaming has been uninvestigated,and also how their influence paths work.This article is aimed to explore the factors affecting fan involvement in the e-commerce livestreaming.Based on stimulus-response theory and literature review,this empirical research selects typical factors about different characteristics of e-commerce livestreaming,including "professionalism" "interactivity" "sales promotion" and " strength of ties" as independent variables.In addition,"perceived trust" and "self-efficacy" of consumers are regarded as mediators,and ego-involvement of fans is placed as dependent variable.Those factors are built to the theoretical model of the mechanism of fans' ego-involvement in the e-commerce livestreaming.Through literature and empirical tests,it turns out that there are two paths of effect on the degrees of fans' ego-involvement through e-commerce livestreaming:(1)Immediate impact path: "strength of ties" between live broadcasts and consumers has a positively immediate impact on the degrees of fans' ego-involvement whereas "professionalism""interactivity" and "sales promotion" have no significant impact on the degrees of fans' ego-involvement,but those variables are closely correlated.Meanwhile,the mediators"perceived trust and "self-efficacy" of fans play a significant positive effect on the degrees of fans' ego-involvement.(2)Indirect effects path."Professionalism" "sales promotion" and"strength of ties" of live broadcasts positively effect fans' ego-involvement via mediators"perceived trust" and "self-efficacy",and the mediating effect of "perceived trust" is more powerful.However,the effect of "interactivity" of e-commerce livestreaming is not significant towards the degrees of fans' involvement.