The Influence of Anchor Features on Social Media Audiences' Purchase Intention in Live Streaming in China

Abstract

Fresh agricultural products live streaming technology has developed rapidly in China, the quality of anchors is uneven, and the audience's intention to purchase is reduced. To solve this problem, the main objective of this study is to examine the relationship between anchor features and audience purchase intention. This study adopts a quantitative research method, The Tencent questionnaire（Like Google form）was used for online data collection and analyzing a sample size of 407 using SPSS27 and SMARTPLS4.0. In this study, 20 hypotheses were proposed, 6 were rejected and 14 were accepted. The results show that: 1) The credibility, professionalism, attractiveness, and interactivity of the anchor's features have a negative impact on perceived risk; the attractiveness of the anchor's features has a positive impact on purchase intention.  2) Perceived risk has a negative impact on purchase intention. 3) Perceived risk has a full mediating effect between the anchor features of credibility, professionalism, attractiveness, interactivity, and purchase intention. This study's results enrich the research theory on purchase intention of live streaming of fresh agriculture products and provide an important basis for the live streaming industry of fresh agriculture products in selecting anchors. There are many factors that affect the audience's purchase intention, and this study is only from the perspective of the anchors. Therefore, this study suggests that future scholars can verify the impact of live-streaming features on the audience's purchase intention from other perspectives, such as electronic service platforms.