The Impact Of Perceived Crowding On Consumer Impulse Buying

Live streaming e-commerce refreshes consumers'shopping mode,and it is easy to trigger consumers'impulse buying behavior.The scale of live streaming e-commerce users in China is 388 million by December 2020.Users who have purchased goods in live streaming e-commerce users account for 66.2%of the total live streaming e-commerce users,among which 17.8%of the users'consumption amount of live streaming e-commerce users accounts for more than30%of all their online shopping consumption.Nearly half of the users of live streaming e-commerce believe that the problem of live streaming e-commerce is easily to cause impulse consumption,and the overall return rate of live streaming e-commerce is about 30%-40%.Therefore,the impulse buying behavior of consumers in live e-commerce is worth paying attention to.Existing studies have focused on the functions and characteristics of live streaming e-commerce platform,explored hosts,products,content and other factors in live streaming,and discussed the psychology of consumers.This research attempts to find the influence of perceived crowding on consumers'impulse buying and its internal mechanism in the context of live e-commerce,so as to comprehend consumers'impulse buying behavior and provide marketing suggestions for merchants and platforms.Based on the S-O-R model,this paper proposes a research framework of"perceived crowding-emotion-impulse buying",and verified the hypothesis through two pilot studies(N_{pilot study1}=181;N_{pilot study2}=122)and two formal studies(N_study1=149;N_study2=249).Specifically,the pilot study 1 verified the manipulation of spatial crowding.The pilot study 1 has initially verified the positive effect of human crowding on consumers'impulse buying.In study 1,the moderating effect of spatial crowding was verified,and the main effect was verified again.In study 2,the mediating effect of emotion was verified by changing the product type,and the main effect and moderating effect were verified again.Therefore,three conclusions are drawn in this research.First,in the scenario of live e-commerce,consumers are more likely to buy impulsively with higher human crowding.Second,emotion plays a mediating role in the impact of human crowding on impulse buying.Third,spatial crowding negatively moderates the impact of human crowding on impulse purchase.When the spatial crowding is low,consumers are the more likely to make impulse purchase with higher human crowding.When the spatial crowding is high,the human crowding has no significant effect on consumers'impulse purchase.To sum up,this research focused on consumers'perception of space in live e-commerce,and explored the impact of perceived crowding on consumers'impulse buying from the perspective of emotion.In terms of theory,it is innovative and helps to supplement the research gap of perceived crowding and live e-commerce.In practice,it helps consumers understand their own impulse buying behavior,and also reveals that merchants and platforms can achieve marketing goals by changing consumers'perception of crowding and change consumers'emotions,which is of research value.