Why do consumers hesitate to purchase in live streaming? A perspective of interaction between participants

• Anchors and consumers are the main participants in e-commerce live streaming. • Interactions in e-commerce live streaming have an impact on purchase hesitation. • Social presence and physical presence mediate participants’ interaction and trust. • Trust does not reduce consumers’ purchase hesitation in live streaming. Live streaming commerce has rapidly developed in recent years; however serious purchase hesitation do exist at the final payment stage. Contrary to the previous studies focusing more on purchase intention, this research constructed a conceptual model of purchase hesitation based on the theory of telepresence and trust from the perspective of participants’ interaction in order to study the factors influencing consumers’ purchase hesitation in the context of live streaming. By collecting and analyzing data from 293 surveys, the study suggested that consumer-anchor and consumer-consumer interaction both affected positively the social presence and physical presence in the live streaming commerce. Moreover, social presence and physical presence had a mediating effect between the participants’ interaction and trust. Unexpectedly, trust was verified to positively affect purchase hesitation which signified that the trust in the environment of live streaming is more complex than traditional online shopping and that the trust is not the only factor prompting users to buy. The research is one of first to investigate the purchase hesitation in the live streaming commerce and provides theoretical support and practical enlightenment for anchors, platform, and merchants to reduce consumers’ purchase hesitation in the view of interaction.