From stress to impulse buying: the perspective of informational conformity and competitive arousal in livestreaming e-commerce

Yundi Zhang; Xiangbin Yan; Tingting Zhang; Weiguo Fan

doi:10.1007/s10660-025-10057-5

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From stress to impulse buying: the perspective of informational conformity and competitive arousal in livestreaming e-commerce

Journal article

Peer reviewed

From stress to impulse buying: the perspective of informational conformity and competitive arousal in livestreaming e-commerce

Yundi Zhang, Xiangbin Yan, Tingting Zhang and Weiguo Fan

Electronic commerce research

10/31/2025

DOI: 10.1007/s10660-025-10057-5

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Abstract

Impulsive buying has become increasingly prevalent in livestreaming e-commerce. While existing research predominantly explains this phenomenon considering consumers’ positive responses to livestreaming, stress response mechanisms remain underexplored. To address this issue, this study adopts a context-attitude-behavior framework to investigate how five contextual stimuli (time pressure, perceived product scarcity, perceived product popularity, vicarious experience, and livestream audience involvement) affect impulsive buying through two distinct coping strategies under situational stress stimuli (informational conformity and competitive arousal). The proposed relationships were validated using 783 survey responses and a structural equation modeling-artificial neural network hybrid approach. It is found that impulse buying can be affected by competitive arousal and informational conformity, with the former being influenced by the five contextual stimuli and moderated by informational influence susceptibility and the latter being affected by time pressure and perceived product scarcity. These findings offer certain insights into impulsive buying from a stress response perspective and provide some actionable guidance for practice.

Competitive arousal

Impulsive buying

Informational conformity

Informational influence susceptibility

Livestreaming e-commerce

Vicarious experience

Details

Title: Subtitle: From stress to impulse buying: the perspective of informational conformity and competitive arousal in livestreaming e-commerce
Creators: Yundi Zhang - University of Science and Technology Beijing
Xiangbin Yan - University of Science and Technology Beijing
Tingting Zhang - University of Science and Technology Beijing
Weiguo Fan - Department of Business Analytics, Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States
Resource Type: Journal article
Publication Details: Electronic commerce research
DOI: 10.1007/s10660-025-10057-5
ISSN: 1389-5753
eISSN: 1572-9362
Publisher: Springer Nature
Grant note: National Natural Science Foundation of China: 72025101, 72394372, 72401028
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 72025101, 72394372, 72401028].
Language: English
Electronic publication date: 10/31/2025
Academic Unit: Business Analytics
Record Identifier: 9985024138502771

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