Factors Effecting of the Consumer Purchase Intention by Local Life Services Live Streaming

: As new e-commerce and local life service model, local service live streaming has great potential. This study intends to investigate the connections between live streamers, viewers, the product, the platform (i.e., ability, interaction, comment, promotion, trust and popularity) and the consumer's purchase intention. It also investigates the moderating role of consumer perceived value (i.e. perceived risk, perceived usefulness and perceived social value). Collected data from questionnaire and examined the hypotheses with structural equation model. The results suggest that interaction and ability have direct positive effects on purchase intention, and consumer perceived risk, perceived usefulness and perceived social value has significant moderating effect between factors and intention. This study gives some management implications for local service live streaming while extending the field of theoretical research on consumers purchase intention.


Background
Today, with the gradual development of 5G internet and financial payment technology, the local life service market has emerged with wider and new ways. Especially, in China local life live streaming is developing rapidly. Live streaming is a two-way circular release of information networks, which enables information to be released simultaneously with occurrence 0. And it is very common that live streaming is the preferred choice for both private and professional events now. Digital media like Douyin has played a major role in recent years. China's live-streaming market has developed into a crucial platform for the country's economic recovery throughout the epidemic. The "live streaming with local services" consumption model has grown in popularity, and the Chinese market has demonstrated significant potential and vitality. According to report from CNNIC, the total amount of China's digital economy was about 50 trillion yuan in 2022, accounting for over 40% of GDP. The local life services sector has continued to grow steadily with live streaming thanks to the fast development of the digital economy.
The local life market in China is closely related to the O2O (Online-to-offline) market, a business model that encourages potential online customers to make purchases in physical businesses using online channels [2]. Today, It is focused on connecting online transactions to offline service-oriented goods and local life services including dining, movies, travel, and other leisure activities.
Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) local life refers to content that focuses on local living. It is divided into three categories: catering, tourism and comprehensive industry. Based on the live-stream model, it is expected to involve realtime interaction [3]. Today online local service market size reaches 345.5 billion yuan, and it will exceed 2.5 trillion yuan by 2025. As a new entrant, Douyin has built up a large number of traffic and user gracefulness in this fields.

Literature
A number of authors have considered the effect of live streaming on different fields, such as tourism, e-game, education. During pandemic, live streaming enables interactions in real-time between many viewers in tourism [4], which gives them a better understanding and trust of the products. It is now well established from a variety of studies that factors effecting consumers purchase behavior in live streaming. From the perspective of platform, Platform loyalty have a significant impact on consumers' purchase decisions [5]. From the consumer's perspective, sense of community, entertainment, information seeking, and a lack of external support in real life can increase engagement [6]. Additionally, it was proposed that the viewer's behavioral intentions for live streaming will be significantly influenced by gender and comedy appeals, social status presentation, and interaction [7]. Due to the relatively short history of of Douyin local life, the academic research may be limited at this stage. But industry reports, case studies, and user surveys could provide valuable insights into the research about local life services live streaming on Douyin.

Effect of Ability
As scholars have suggested, the professionalism of the messenger can go some way to reducing consumer concerns about product quality [8]. Live streamer's ability allows viewers to obtain useful information and reduce the cost of information acquisition. Through introduction and real-time communication, live streamer can stimulate fans' positive perception of the quality and value of the product and reduce consumers' purchase doubts [9]. It also creates a positive social environment and enhance the perceived social value of the live streaming.
Hypothesis 1c (H1c). Ability of live streamers positively affects consumer social perceived value.

Effect of Interaction
Interaction in real time between consumers and live streamers helps enhance consumers participation, immersion, product involvement and perceived utility value [10]. Live streamers who actively respond to concerns, and provide detailed can reduce consumers perceived risks.
Hypothesis 2a (H2a). Interaction between live streamers and consumers negatively affects consumer perceived risk.
Hypothesis 2b (H2b). Interaction between live streamers and consumers positively affects consumer perceived usefulness.
Hypothesis 2c (H2c). Interaction between live streamers and consumers positively affects consumer social perceived value.

Effect of Popularity
Live streaming room's popularity refers to the number of people in the room and the number of products sold. With a large number of viewers, they may experience a sense of social presence and there is a higher likelihood of generating conformity behavior. Conformity behavior can reduce consumers' risk perception in uncertain situations. One study showed that the number of viewers and products sold in a livestream can create a popular live atmosphere, which can make consumers make a sense of trust and belonging [11]. Meanwhile, Katz and Shapiro defined when users perceive the number of users on that platform to be large in size, it can increase the utility of the users and their willingness to continue using the platform [12].
Hypothesis 3a (H3a). The popularity of live streaming room negatively affects consumer perceived risk.
Hypothesis 3b (H3b). The popularity of live streaming room positively affects consumer perceived usefulness.
Hypothesis 3c (H3c). The popularity of live streaming room positively affects consumer perceived social value.

Effect of Trust
Flavián and Guinalíu revealed that consumer trust is mostly influenced by consumer perceptions of private data security [13]. A higher platform reputation will reduce the consumer's purchase risk and leads to better expected behaviour and positive shopping attitudes [14]. When consumers perceive a higher level of trust in the platform, they are more inclined to have a positive attitude towards the content and activities on the platform. The trust in the platform can also enhance the perception of social presence among consumers.
Hypothesis 4a (H4a). The trust on live streaming platform negatively affects consumer perceived risk.
Hypothesis 4b (H4b). The trust on live streaming platform positively affects consumer perceived usefulness.
Hypothesis 4c (H4c). The trust on live streaming platform positively affects consumer social perceived value.

Effect of Comment
When viewers see other viewers actively engaging in comment box, they may feel more confident and secure. And richness of interaction has a positive effect on consumer purchase intention [15]. It provides to help viewers enhance perception of the usefulness. Additionally, other findings suggested that a person's participation to a task positively affects how customers perceive their social interactions in a group [16].

Effect of Promotion
The live-stream promotion refers to free shipping, coupons, and discounts. These discounts can increase perception of usefulness as they can acquire the desired products or services at a lower cost. It also causes consumers to exaggerate the perceptions and ignore the perceived risks in the promotion [17]. In promotional activities, consumers often interact with other consumers, it provides a sense of belonging.

Mediating role of Customer Perceived Value
Consumers' perceived value of products or services has a positive impact on purchase intention [18]. Sweeney's research provided the foundation for further refining the consumer's perceived value model to four dimensions: quality value, social value, emotional value, and pricing value [19].
Hypothesis 7 (H7). Consumer perceived usefulness mediates the effect of local life service live streaming on consumer purchase intention.
Hypothesis 8 (H8). Consumer perceived risk mediates the effect of local life service live streaming on consumer purchase intention.
Hypothesis 9 (H9). Consumer perceived social value mediates the effect of local life service live streaming on consumer purchase intention.

Directly Impact on Purchase Intention
Consumer purchase intention means how likely consumers are to be willing to take a particular purchase action. Effect of Douyin local life services live streaming (ability and interaction, popularity, trust, comment, promotion) may not pass through the intermediary variables, but directly affect the actual consumption behavior of consumers.
Hypothesis 10b (H10b). Interaction between live streamers and consumers positively affects consumer purchase intention.
Hypothesis 10c (H10c). The popularity of live-stream room positively affects consumer purchase intention.

Method
This study uses questionnaire to collect data, taking into account the purpose of the study and the effect of local life services live streaming on Douyin. The original questionnaire was constructed in English, but the respondents on Douyin were presented with a questionnaire that was translated to Chinese. These scales have been previously developed and tested by researchers in the relevant field and all the items in questionnaire were measured by a 5-point Likert scale ranging from "1 = strongly disagree" to "5 = strongly agree". Through the survey platform (https://www.wjx.cn), a total of 600 questionnaires were distributed, of which 522 were complete and valid responses.

Structural Equation Modeling
Structural Equation Modeling is a very general statistical modeling technique, which is widely used in the behavioral sciences. It can be viewed as a combination of factor analysis and regression or path analysis. The relationships between the theoretical constructs are represented by regression or path coefficients between the factors. The structural equation model implies a structure for the covariances between the observed variables, which provides the alternative name covariance structure modeling [20]. A key contribution of the structural equation model is the incorporation of customer perceptions of equity and value and customer brand preference into an integrated repurchase intention analysis. Hellier developed a general service sector model of repurchase intention from consumer theory literature [21]. The structural equation model can realize the factor analysis, path and causal effect analysis and other aspects of the analysis between the indicators.
The theoretical framework of this study is presented in Figure 1.

Reliability
In order to ensure the reliability of the survey results, the reliability of the questions will be tested. Cronbach 's Alpha reliability coefficient will be used to check the consistency of the variables on each measurement item. The higher the coefficient value of the result, the higher the reliability (0-1). It is generally considered that the reliability coefficient is higher than 0.6. For all the latent variables, the Cronbach's alpha in table 2 is higher than 0.9, indicating acceptable internal consistency.

Confirmatory factor analysis
According to table 3, CMIN/DF (X2) is 1.636 in the range of 1-3, RMSEA is 0.035 in the excellent range of less than 0.05, and IFI, TLI, CFI, GFI and AGFI greater than 0.9. Therefore, based on results, it can be seen that this scale model has a good fit. On the basis of the good fit of the CFA model, The convergence validity of each dimension of the scale will be further tested. The standardized factor loading of each measurement item in the corresponding dimension is calculated by the established CFA model, and then calculates the convergence validity value and composite reliability value of each dimension through the calculation formulas of AVE and CR. Based on the suggested average variance extracted (AVE) value higher than 0.5, composite reliability (CR) requires a minimum of 0.7 to show adequate validity.
AVE= (∑λ 2 )/n CR= (∑λ) 2 /( (∑λ) 2 +∑δ) The AVE values of each dimension reach more than 0.5, and the AR values reach more than 0.7 in table 4, indicating that each dimension has good convergence validity and combined reliability. In Table 5, it can be seen that the standardized correlation coefficients between the two of each dimension are all smaller than the square of the ave value corresponding to the dimension, so it is explained that each dimension has a good discriminant validity.

Normal distribution
Statistical analysis and normal distribution test results are presented in table 6, the mean scores of each variable are between 3-4, and the scale scoring method is 1-5 positive scoring. Therefore, it can be seen that the cognition and behavior of the target group in the local life services live streaming of this study are all above average level.
The normality test of each measurement item is tested by SPSS skewness and kurtosis. According to the standard proposed by Kline, if the absolute value of the skewness coefficient is less than 3 and the absolute value of the kurtosis coefficient is less than 8, it can be considered that the data meets the approximate normal distribution requirements [22].
The absolute values of the skewness and kurtosis coefficients of each measurement item in table 6 are within the standard range. Therefore, it can be stated that the data of each measurement item matches normal distribution.

Correlation analysis
Pearson correlation coefficient is used to explore the correlation between multiple variables [23]. According to the analysis results, the correlation coefficients r between each variable are all greater than 0, so there is a significant positive correlation between each variable.

Structural model
The results of the path analysis for the model are in table 7. It includes the standardized path coefficients (Std), standard errors (S.E.), critical ratio (C.R.) of the test statistic, and the significance level (P-value) for testing the hypothesis paths between variables. If C.R. >1.96 and P<0.05, hypothesis is supported. Based on the above results, remove H6b,H2c for mediation analysis. And as for H10c H10d H10e H10f, it is possible that there is a mediating effect in the case where the coefficient c is not significant [24].

Mediation Analysis
Bootstrap method is a non-parametric statistical technique used to estimate the distribution of a statistic and construct confidence intervals by repeatedly sampling with replacement from the original data [25]. In this study, I aim to employ the Bootstrap method to assess the significance of the mediating effect and calculate a 95% confidence interval. Table 8 displays the bootstrapping results of the mediating effect with PR as the mediating variable. The Z values for the Interaction, Ability, and Popularity effects are all more than 1.96 when Perceived Risk is used as the mediating variable, and the confidence intervals exclude zero. Furthermore, confidence ranges for direct effects do not include zero, indicating partial mediation. Direct effects for Comment and Trust are all smaller than 1.96, with confidence ranges that include zero, indicating complete mediation. Promotion's total and direct impacts are both smaller than 1.96, demonstrating the absence of a mediating effect.  Table 9 displays the bootstrapping results of the mediating effect with Perceived social value as the mediating variable. The findings indicate that the mediating influence on ability is only partial. However, the values for Popularity, Comment, and Trust are complete mediators. But as for Promotion, here is no mediating effect.

Result
The main focus of this study is to examine the consumer purchasing psychological mechanisms in Douyin local service live streaming. Distinguishing from traditional ecommerce, this study analyzes the impact of interaction with live streamer and consumer, live streamer's ability, livestream popularity, comments, trust in the platform and promotion on consumer purchase intention. It also examines the mediating effects of perceived usefulness (PU), perceived social value (PSV), and perceived risk (PR).
The results indicate that interaction, ability, popularity, comment, and trust have different psychological mechanisms influencing purchase intention.
First, interaction and ability have direct positive effects on purchase intention, and PU and PR partially mediate the relationship between interaction and purchase intention. PU, PSV, and PR partially mediate the relationship between ability and purchase intention. In other words, interaction and ability have direct positive influence on purchase intention, and consumer interaction can reduce perceived risk and partially increase purchase intention. The host's ability can also increase purchase intention partially by reducing perceived risk, increasing perceived usefulness, and enhancing social value perception.
Second, popularity, comment, and trust do not have a direct effect on purchase intention, but they indirectly influence purchase intention through the mediating variables PU, PSV, and PR. Particularly, PU, PSV, and PR completely mediate the relationship between comment, trust, and purchase intention. PR partially mediates the relationship between popularity and purchase intention, and PU and PSV fully mediate the relationship between popularity and purchase intention.
Third, Promotion does not have an impact on purchase intention. Figure 2 represents the revised structural analysis of the study based on the results.

Figure 2. Results of structural model
In summary, the ability and interaction of the live streamer have direct positive influence on consumers purchase intention. Through interactions and introduction with viewers, live streamer can establish emotional connections and trust, increasing viewer engagement and purchase intention. Online stores can better select suitable live streamers to improve sales conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
Trust on platform and consumers' comment can also indirectly effect on consumers purchase intention by consumers perceived value. So platforms can optimize platform design and functionality, providing a better interactive experience and increasing user engagement and trust. And researching on the factors of local life services live streaming on purchase intention contributes to the formulation of industry standards and regulations, and enhances the overall integrity and credibility of the local life services live-stream industry.
Findings of this study have provided a deeper understanding and development to the SEM model in the context of digital consumer behavior in local life services live streaming.