The Effect of Audience’s Perceived Trustworthy to the Participation

Behaviors Based on Live Broadcast

Liping Yan and Ming Xue

School of Business Administration, Shanghai Lixin University of Accounting and Finance, Shanghai, China

Keywords: Perceived Trustworthy, Live Streaming, Social Commerce, Participation Behaviors.

Abstract: Live broadcast is a way to instantly send images and sound to other objects through multiple communication

technologies. Live broadcast can bring immersive feelings to the receiver. Recently, with the application of

live broadcast in the field of e-commerce, some scholars have begun to pay attention to the impact of live

broadcast technology on customer purchase. Based on social capital theory, this study explores the factors

affecting audience’s perceived trustworthy of broadcasters engaging live streaming activities in social media

platforms. The result of investigation 365 samples found that the audience’s perceived familiarity, similarity

and expertise of live broadcaster have positive association with perceived trustworthy, which subsequently

positive affect audiences’ intention to recommend, purchase and show “likes”.

1 INTRODUCTION

Since 2017, more than 200 live broadcasting

platforms emerged in China, and the number of online

live broadcast users has reached 398 million. It is

expected that the user scale will exceed 500 million

in 2019.

Tictok, as one of the leading short video platforms

in China, has an average daily user usage time of

more than 60 minutes and more than 300 million

social clicks. Tictok users involve in various

occupations. The proportion of people with medium

consumption and above accounted for 33%, and the

proportion of people with medium and high

consumption reached 27.4%, which can meet the

marketing needs of different advertisers. Many

advertisers and business choose to use live streaming

to promote their brands. During the COVID-19

pandemic, traditional retailing encountered greater

pressure, live shopping has become a popular way for

consumers to purchase.

The social attributes owned by Tictok have

brought huge opportunity to e-commerce. Although

live broadcast has huge consumption potential, there

are huge obstacles to converting live broadcasting

into consumption. Therefore, it has important

practical significance for business to investigating the

factors that affecting consumers’ participation

behaviors in social live broadcasting. Some

businesses incorporate sales promotion into live

activities. They design unique content to attract users’

attention, and then intersperse product promotion and

sales in the live broadcast to convert fans into

customers. In this process, customers’ trust to the

broadcaster has become the key to fan conversion.

The purpose of this study is to explore the factors that

affect customer trust in the context of live broadcast

and their influence on customer participation

behaviors, including purchase, recommendation, and

show likes.

2 THEORETICAL

BACKGROUND AND

HYPOTHESES

2.1 Social Commerce Live Streaming

Live broadcast is a way to instantly send images and

sound to other objects through multiple

communication technologies (Sun, 2019). Live

broadcast can bring immersive feelings to the receiver

(Chen, 2018). Existing research mainly focuses on the

application of live broadcasting in the field of e-sports

(Cheung, 2011) and video games (SjöBlom, 2016).

Recently, with the application of live broadcast in the

field of e-commerce, some scholars have begun to

pay attention to the impact of live broadcast

246

Yan, L. and Xue, M.

The Effect of Audienceâ

Zs Perceived Trustworthy to the Participation Behaviors Based on Live Broadcast.

DOI: 10.5220/0011734100003607

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Public Management, Digital Economy and Internet Technology (ICPDI 2022), pages 246-250

ISBN: 978-989-758-620-0

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Figure 1: Theoretical framework and hypotheses.

technology on customer purchase

(Wongkitrungrueng; Cai, 2018). Social media-based

live commerce business refers to e-commerce

activities with online sales promotion that support

social interactive media (Wongkitrungrueng). For

example, sales promotion activities based on

Facebook or Tickok platform. Existing research

mainly focuses on the influence of social presence

and the perceived value of customers on their

participation behavior, while few studies focus on the

influence of customers’ trust in broadcasters on their

subsequent participation behavior.

2.2 Social Capital Theory

According to social capital theory, individuals’

cognition and relationship that form with others will

affect the formation of their trust (Hazleton, 2000).

Relationship refers to the intimacy or relationship

strength formed by an individual in the interaction

with others. For an individual, the relationship with

others is its important social capital; cognition refers

to common thoughts and feelings formed by the

interaction between the individual and others.

Familiarity is related to the dimension of

relationship in social capital, which represents the

connection between members. Perceived similarity is

related to one’s cognition. Perceived expertness

refers to viewers’ perception of broadcasters’ ability.

Based on the social capital theory, this research

proposed hypotheses shown in Figure 1. The

theoretical framework starts with audiences’

perceived familiarity, perceived similarity, and

perceived expertise, and trust is included as an

intermediary variable, which in turn affect viewers’

intention of recommendation, purchase, and show

likes.

2.3 Perceived Familiarity

Familiarity refers to the degree of an individual’s

understanding of others through interaction, and the

information obtained during the interaction, which

can be used to predict the behavior of others. Studies

have found that whether in offline or online

environments, people always tend to trust the objects

they are familiar with (Lu, 2010; Gulati, 1995; Wu,

2005), because familiarity can reduce uncertainty and

promote the establishment of trust (Rousseau, 1998).

In addition, past research have found that in the

virtual community, the more interactions between

members, the more members trust the peers (Wu,

2005). The result indicated that there is a positive

relationship between familiarity and trust. In the

context of live broadcasting, viewers have a higher

degree of familiarity means that through continuous

interaction, the accumulation of information and

understanding of broadcasters is formed. As this

degree of understanding deepens, members will

establish a stronger relationship of trust. Therefore,

this research hypothesizes:

H1: The audience’s perception of familiarity with

the broadcaster have a positive correlation with trust

2.4 Perceived Similarity

Perceived similarity refers to the characteristics that

an individual perceives in common with others, such

as interests, values, or demographic characteristics

(Lu, 2010). In the context of live broadcast, people

watch live broadcast because of the common interests

or goals with broadcaster. These common interests

and goals, or similar experiences, form the similarity

between fans and anchors. Existing research studies

have shown that similarity promotes interpersonal

trust behavior (Dwyer, 1987; Doney, 1997). In the

context of the Internet, past stud found individuals are

more inclined to adopt similar suggestions (Ziegler,

2007). In the context of live broadcast, the audience’s

perception of similarity to the live broadcaster will

have a positive impact perceived trust, because

individuals can easily establish trust in groups with

similar characteristics to themselves. Based on the

above discussion, this research proposes

H2: The audience's perception of similarity of the

broadcaster is positively associated will trust.

The Effect of Audienceâ

Zs Perceived Trustworthy to the Participation Behaviors Based on Live Broadcast

247

2.5 Perceived Expertise

Perceived expert refers to an individual’s awareness

of the ability and skills of others. A large number of

existing studies have confirmed the impact of

expertise on trust. For example, research on reviews

has shown that the expertise of reviewer has an

important influence on their credibility (West,

Broniarczyk). Individuals usually associate the

correctness of information obtained from others with

their personal expertise in a particular field (Feick,

Higie). In the context of online sales, consumers

usually face greater shopping risks, and they strive to

seek clues so as to reduce the potential risks they face

in shopping. Existing studies have confirmed that

expert and trust have a positive association (Feick,

Higie; Gilly, Graham, Wolfinbarger, Yale;

McCracken, 1989; McGinnies, 1980). In the context

of live broadcast, we believe that the broadcaster’s

professional knowledge of the relevant products will

have a significant impact on audiences’ belief of trust.

H3: The audience’s perception of expert of the

broadcaster will have a positive impact on their trust.

2.6 Perceived Trustworthy and

Participation Behaviors

In the context of e-commerce, customers will face

greater risks, so trust becomes extremely important in

online consumption. For example, Lu and Wang’s

study confirmed that customers’ trust in e-commerce

will have a positive impact on their intention of

purchases and recommendation (Gulati, 1995). Also,

some studies have confirmed that viewer’s trust in the

context of virtual communities affects other

behaviors, such as likes and recommendations

(Porter, 2008). In the context of live broadcasting, we

believe that viewers’ trust of broadcasters will affect

their later adoption of broadcasters’ product

recommendations, that is, enhance their intention to

purchase, and their positive participation behaviors,

such as likes and recommendations to others. Based

on the above discussion, this research proposes the

following hypotheses:

H4a: The audience's perceived trust is positively

associated with their willingness to recommend (a),

purchase (b), and likes (c)

3 METHORD

3.1 Samples and Data Collection

Specially, we selected users of Tictok in china as a

data source. The questionnaire was set up on

Wenjuanxing, a Chinese online market research

website, which is able to forward the link of the

questionnaire to potential respondents. 398 users

were invited to participate in the survey. At last, the

final sample after data cleaning was 365, resulting in

a valid rate of 91.7%. Table 1 showed the descriptive

information of the dataset.

Table 1: Descriptive information of the dataset (n=365).

Measure Item Count %

Gender female 202 55.3

male 163 44.7

Age 20 or below 35 9.5

>20 or ≤30 279 76.4

>30 and ≤40 49 13.4

>40 and ≤50 2 0.5

Above 50 0 0.0

Education High school or below 0 0.0

Two-year college degree 125 34.2

Four-year college degree 217 59.5

Graduate school or above 23 6.3

3.2 Measures

We measured all items using a 7-point Likert scale

ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. We

choose items from Gefen (Gefen, 2000) to measure

perceived familiarity. Perceived similarity was

measured using items drawn from Crosby (Crosby,

1990). Items measuring perceived expertise were

adapted from Shen et al (Shen, 2010). Trust was

measured using items drawn from Pavlou and

Fygenson (Pavlou, 2006). Items were adapted from

Chen and Wang (Chen, 2017) to measure intention to

purchase. We adapted items from Porter (Porter,

2008) to measure intention to recommendation and

likes.

3.3 Measurement Validation

As all measures were self-reported, we used

Harman’s one-factor test to check the common

method variance based on Podsakoff and Organ’s

suggestions (Podsakoff, 1986). We extracted seven

factors with eigenvalues greater than 1, and the first

factor accounted for 27.6% of the total variance.

To examine the measurement validity of the

constructs, confirmatory factor analysis was

conducted using AMOS 20.0. The fit statistics of a

reduced measurement model revealed adequate fit: χ

= 401.25, df = 321, p < 0.001, χ

/ df = 1.25, CFI =

ICPDI 2022 - International Conference on Public Management, Digital Economy and Internet Technology

248

0.94, TLI = 0.93, NFI = 0.92 and RMSEA = 0.04. The

standard loadings of the remaining items were mostly

above 0.7. The average variance extracted (AVE) for

every construct was above 0.65. We used composite

reliabilities (CRs) to evaluate the internal consistency

of the measurement model. The result showed that

CRs were all above 0.8, indicating the scales had

good reliabilities. All Cronbach’s alpha values are

above the 0.70 threshold, indicating that the scales

had high reliabilities.

3.4 Hypotheses Tests

The means and standard deviations of each constructs

is shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Summary of measurement scales (n = 365).

Variable Mean SD Cronbach’s

Perceived familiarity 3.68 0.98 0.79

Perceived similarity 3.12 1.06 0.81

Perceived expert 4.03 0.97 0.85

Trust 4.12 1.06 0.76

Intention to recommend 3.06 1.14 0.88

Intention to purchase 2.98 0.95 0.82

likes 3.52 1.13 0.80

The overall fit of the structural model was highly

acceptable: χ2= 463.64, df = 346, yielding a value of

χ2/df = 1.34; CFI = 0.93, TLI = 0.92, NFI = 0.95 and

RMSEA = 0.04.

The result showed that perceived familiarity is

positively association with trust (b = 0.27, p < 0.001),

then hypothesis H1 was supported.

It was indicated that perceived similarity is

significantly related to trust (b = 0.31, p < 0.001), that

is, the hypothesis H2 were supported.

Hypothesis H3 predicted that perceived expertise

is positively related to trust. The results indicate that

perceived expert is positively associate with trust (b

= 0.14, p < 0.05). The results provide support for H3.

The results demonstrated that trust is positively

related to intention to recommendation (b = 0.28, p <

0.01), purchase (b = 0.19, p < 0.01) and likes (b =

0.38, p < 0.001), hence, H4a, H4b and H4c were

supported.

4 CONCLUSION

Based on the data collected from the Chinese live

broadcast platform Tictok, this study found that the

audience’s perceived trust of the live broadcaster plays

an important role in their participation behaviors.

Specifically, this study combines the formation

mechanism of trust and the formation process of

consumer participation behavior to study the factors

that affect the establishment of trust in the context of

live broadcast and how this trust affects consumer

behaviors. The main findings of this research are as

follows: First, perceived familiarity significantly

affects the perceived trust of live broadcasters.

Second, the perceived similarity is positively

correlated with the trust of broadcaster, the

individual’s cognition of the characteristics of others

is very important. When a person perceives that

another person is more like him or her, the more he or

she feels that the other person is trustworthy. In

addition, the audience

S’ perception of expertise of the

broadcaster has a positive effect on perceived trust,

which will in turn have a positive effect on

recommendations, purchases and likes.

This research analyzes the influence of viewers’

perception of live broadcast on their trust and the

influence of trust on their participation behavior

intention from the perspective of social capital. The

intention of participation behavior here is mainly

reflected in the recommendation, purchase and likes

of the live broadcast. The results of this study provide

implications for retailers and sellers who use live

broadcasts for product sales. For example, perceived

familiarity has a significant impact on audience’ trust,

indicating that audiences’ emotional dependence on

the broadcaster is an important factor. For community

managers, cultivating members’ familiarity can

actually promote audience participation, which is

conducive to the survival and development of live

broadcasts. How to promote audience familiarity is

explained from the perspective of social capital, and

the results can also provide practical implications for

live broadcast retailers. For example, live broadcasters

can use more live broadcast content to promote

familiarity with the audience, thereby promoting the

establishment of their familiarity, sharing personal

experiences, and deepening the audiences’ familiarity

with the broadcaster. In addition, the focus and

refinement of the live content helps to enhance the

similarity between members, and when members are

familiar with each other and have a high perceived

similarity, it can promote trust between them and

further strengthen their sense of belonging. This result

shows that live broadcast sales can indeed transform

members into customers through the transfer

mechanism of trust. Therefore, for live broadcast

merchants, they should try their best to provide

consumers with live stream activities which can

The Effect of Audienceâ

Zs Perceived Trustworthy to the Participation Behaviors Based on Live Broadcast

249

enhance audiences’ perceived familiarity, similarity,

and expertise.

Specifically, live broadcasters should pay attention

to communication and interaction with the audience to

help build trust. In addition, setting a more specific

and focused live broadcast theme can increase the

audience’s perceived similarity and professionalism,

and can also promote the formation of trust. In

addition, the research also found that the audience’s

perceived expertise of the broadcaster will affect their

trust. Therefore, for merchants or live broadcast

retailers, broadcaster with rich consumer experience

should be hired to speak, and high-quality content can

also be published. In order to promote audiences’

perception of the expertise of the broadcaster, so as to

improve the quality of live content and enhance the

audiences’ perceived expertise.

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