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Live streaming commerce, a new form of social commerce where firms integrate with broadcasters, community members and customers in live chat rooms for real-time interaction to help sell products, has become increasingly popular. However, factors that impact the success of live streaming commerce are not fully explored. The purpose of this study is to examine these factors by exploring the relationships among customer trust (i.e., trust in broadcasters, community members, and products) and customer engagement, and the mediating role of swift guanxi.

The authors surveyed 422 customers who have watched Taobao Live, one of the largest live streaming commerce sites in China, and used their questionnaires to test the research model employing partial least squares modeling.

The authors’ results indicate that trust in broadcasters has a positive effect on trust in products and community members, which positively influences trust in products. Additionally, swift guanxi has a fully mediating effect on the relationship between customers' trust in broadcasters and customer engagement.

First, from the theoretical perspective, this study comprehensively identifies three types of trust, explores the transfer relationships among trust in broadcasters, community members, and products based on Trust Transfer Theory. In addition, this study examines the mediating influence of swift guanxi on the relationship between customer trust and engagement. Second, from the managerial perspective, the study provides insights to help broadcasters and practitioners use live streaming to facilitate shopping.

This paper aims to help hosts or service providers of sharing economy-based accommodation (SEA) to attract new customers and retain existing customers by exploring the antecedents and outcomes of customers’ participation intention.

A questionnaire-based empirical study was conducted to explore the proposed relationships in SEA. Partial least squares modeling with SmartPLS was used to estimate the model and interpret the results.

The study shows that personal factors (utilitarian and hedonic motivation) positively influence customers’ participation intention. The relationship between environmental stimuli (perceived information fit-to-task and perceived visual appeal) and participation intention is negatively moderated by hedonic motivation. Furthermore, the results suggest a positive effect of participation intention on customer engagement behavior and the partial mediating role of experience evaluation.

This paper provides industry practitioners of SEA with valuable insights on attracting new customers and retaining regular customers. First, they can distinguish customers in terms of motivation and provide information based on their requirements. Second, they can encourage customers to evaluate their experience and provide feedback, which would help in promoting the accommodation and service and building a long-term and harmonious relationship with the customers.

This study first investigates the interaction effect of personal motivation and environmental stimuli on participation intention in SEA. It further examines the influence of participation intention on customer engagement behavior and the mediating role of experience evaluation.

本论文旨在帮助SEA(共享经济住宿)的民宿老板或服务提供者, 通过探索顾客参与和契合的影响因子和反应变量, 来吸引新顾客以及保留老顾客。

本论文采用问卷形式实际调研, 探索SEA中的各种假设关系。本论文采用SmartPLS软件, 使用PLS分析法来检验模型以及展示分析结果。

本论文结果表明, 个人因素（功利与享乐需求）正向影响顾客参与。环境因素（感知信息适合和感知视觉吸引）与参与意愿之间被享乐需求负向调节。此外, 结果还表明参与意愿对于顾客契合行为有着正向作用, 以及体验评价的部分中介效应。

本论文为SEA企业从业人员提供如何吸引新顾客以及留住老顾客的宝贵见解。首先, 顾客根据需求和基于他们的需求所提供的信息可进行区分。第二, 企业主应该鼓励顾客评价他们的体验和提供反馈, 从而帮助提高住宿服务以及建立与顾客长期和谐的关系。

本论文首先调研了个人需求和环境刺激对SEA参与意愿的相互作用。其次, 本论文还检验了参与意愿对于顾客契合行为的作用, 以及体验评价的中介效应。

Based on uncertainty reduction theory, this study explores how perceived information transparency mitigates users' perceived uncertainty, which in turn influences their actual purchase behavior. In addition, the moderating effects of cultural tightness on the relationship between perceived information transparency and perceived uncertainty are also considered.

Users with the shopping experience on Xiaohongshu are invited to participate in the survey. Finally, 355 valid longitudinal data are collected.

The results indicate that the three dimensions of perceived information transparency (i.e. perceived product transparency, perceived seller transparency and perceived transaction transparency) can reduce users' perceived uncertainty significantly. Besides, the negative impacts of perceived product and seller transparency on users' perceived uncertainty are stronger when cultural tightness is higher. However, cultural tightness does not moderate the relationship between perceived transaction transparency and users' perceived uncertainty.

First, the authors' research extends the uncertainty reduction theory to the context of social commerce. Second, the authors' research explores the boundary condition under which perceived information transparency varies by identifying cultural tightness as the moderator of the relationship between perceived information transparency and uncertainty. Third, the authors' research enriches the understanding of the cultural tightness of China.

This study investigates how individuals' self-awareness (specifically, private and public self-awareness) and environment-awareness (perceived expertise, similarity and familiarity) shape herd behavior, encompassing discounting one’s information and imitating others. Drawing from latent state-trait theory, this research aims to discern the impact of these factors on purchase intention and behavior.

Longitudinal data from 231 users in Xiaohongshu, China’s leading social commerce platform, were collected to test the proposed model and hypotheses.

The findings from this study show that private self-awareness negatively influences discounting one’s own information and imitating others. Public self-awareness positively affects imitating others, while it does not affect discounting one’s own information. Perceived expertise diminishes discounting one’s own information but does not significantly affect imitating others. Perceived similarity and perceived familiarity are positively related to discounting one’s own information and imitating others. The results confirm different interaction effects between self-awareness and environment-awareness on herd behavior.

First, this contributes back to the latent state-trait theory by expanding the applicability of this theory to explain the phenomenon of herd behavior. Second, this study takes an important step toward theoretical advancement in the extant literature by qualifying that both self- and environment-awareness should be considered to trigger additional effects on herd behavior. Third, this study provides a more enlightened understanding of herd behavior by highlighting the significance of considering the interplay between self- and environment-awareness on herd behavior. Finally, this study also empirically confirms the validity of classifying self-awareness into private and public aspects.

This study investigates how employees' work- and social-related use of social media can individually and interactively render different impacts on employees' performance in the context of internal or external social media.

To test the research model in these two different contexts, the authors collected data from 392 internal social media users and 302 external social media users in the workplace.

The data suggest that the respondents' job performance can be enhanced when using internal social media for work-related purposes and using external social media for social-related purposes. Meanwhile, the interaction of work- and social-related use is positive for external social media but negative for internal social media on job performance. These findings highlight the significant distinction of social media use in the workplace.

First, this study contributes to the literature on the business value of IT by providing theoretical arguments on how companies can capitalize efforts to consider work-related use in combination with social-related use to create business value. Second, this research theorizes two distinct yet interacting views of social media use. The authors offer a more granular insight of the paths from work- and social-related use to employee performance instead of encapsulating social media use in a unitary concept and linking it simply and broadly to employee performance. Third, this research considers the interdependent effects of work- and social-related use on employee performance, and thus goes beyond the independent roles of these two types of social media use. Fourth, the authors find that the links from employees' work- and social-related use of social media to job performance vary in different contexts.

Built upon the push–pull–mooring framework, this study explores the factors that affect user switching from blog to microblogging. Low social presence is posited to form the push effect of blog, whereas larger referent network size and relative ease of use work together to shape the pull effect of newly emerging microblogging. Furthermore, adopting the status quo bias theory and habit literature as theoretical lens, affective commitment, switching costs and habit are regarded as important sources of inertia. Inertia is presumed to play a key role in mooring effects because it negatively affects switching intention and attenuates the main effects of pull and push factors. More importantly, the effects of affective commitment, switching costs and habit on switching intention are fully mediated through inertia.

An empirical study of 239 users who use blog and microblogging services concurrently was conducted in China.

Our findings indicate that low social presence pushes bloggers away, whereas relative ease of use pulls them to the microblogging. Affective commitment, switching costs and habit are important sources of inertia. In the context of this study, inertia fully mediates the relationship between habit and switching intention, and only partially mediates the effect of affective commitment and switching costs on switching intention. Furthermore, inertia negatively moderates the relationships between social presence, relative ease of use and switching intention.

This study expands our understanding of online service switching mechanism, and identified key factors in IT switching, such as social presence, affective commitment and inertia. We believe that these mechanisms and key factors are not necessarily limited to online services, but are largely applicable to other contexts in which people interact with technology. This study builds a useful foundation for future research.

The success of social commerce depends on the actual transactions of consumers, which will be prevented in the presence of high uncertainty. However, attention paid to the uncertainty reduction strategies in social commerce is limited, especially from a unified theoretical framework. Based on uncertainty reduction theory (URT), this paper aims to investigate how three uncertainty reduction strategies (i.e. situational normality, perceived effectiveness of social commerce institutional mechanisms (PESIM) and swift guanxi) affect perceived uncertainty in social commerce, which in turn affects buyers' purchase intention and purchase behavior. The moderating effects of PESIM on the relationships between the other two strategies and perceived uncertainty were also tested.

In this study longitudinal data from 211 buyers who have usage experience of Xiaohongshu were collected to test the proposed model and hypotheses.

Results show that the three uncertainty reduction strategies significantly reduce perceived uncertainty. PESIM negatively moderates the relationships between situational normality and perceived uncertainty, swift guanxi and perceived uncertainty. Perceived uncertainty is negatively related to purchase intention. Purchase intention positively affects purchase behavior.

This study focuses on the role of uncertainty reduction mechanisms in promoting purchase behavior through uncertainty reduction and sheds light on the relationships among situational normality, PESIM, swift guanxi and perceived uncertainty based on URT, which have not been extensively studied from a theoretical perspective in social commerce contexts. Besides, this study investigates the moderating role of PESIM, which improves the understanding of the role of swift guanxi and situational normality in reducing perceived uncertainty under the boundary condition of PESIM.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the shoppers’ social value perception affects their purchase intention in online shopping context through its distinct role and relationships with other value dimensions. The moderating effect of the characteristics of other members on the relationship among value dimensions and the difference of value perception between experienced and inexperienced members were also tested to identify the boundary conditions of the proposed model.

The survey included 272 consumers from a well-known social shopping website in China to test the hypotheses.

The results indicate that hedonic and utilitarian value fully mediate the relationship between social value and purchase intention. Perceived expertise positively moderates the relationship between social value and the other two values. In particular, the results found that while inexperienced members can acquire both higher utilitarian and hedonic value from social value and their purchase intention relies more on the hedonic value, experienced members place greater emphasis on the utilitarian value.

The results may help vendors regain confidence in the social shopping business mode and offer specific policy implications on how to leverage shoppers’ social value perception to generate their purchase intention in a social shopping context.

This study focuses on the legitimacy of the independent role of social value and sheds light on the relationships among social value and other value dimensions based on social capital theory, which was under-explored by previous studies. Besides, this study clarifies the moderating role of experience, which highlights the previously unnoticed changing role of consumers’ value perception.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how four enterprise social media (ESM) affordances (visibility, association, editability and persistence) affect social network ties (instrumental and expressive), which, in turn, influence the in-role and innovative job performance of employees.

A survey of 251 ESM users in the workplace in China was conducted.

All four affordances are positively associated with instrumental ties, yet only the association and editability affordances are positively related to expressive ties. Although instrumental and expressive ties are positively related to in-role and innovative job performance, instrumental ties exert stronger effects on in-role job performance, whereas expressive ties show stronger effects on innovative job performance.

First, additional relevant affordances should be included in an expanded model. Second, future research could examine how patterns of affordances use (unrelated, or hierarchically or sequentially related) affect organizational network ties. Third, there are likely (many) other exogenous factors affecting the model’s relationships. Fourth, the data collected are self-reported.

This study advances the theoretical understanding of the role of ESM affordances in the workplace, especially through their influences on network ties. The findings can guide organizations on how to emphasize ESM affordances to foster instrumental and expressive ties to improve the job performance of employees.

First, it provides novel views on affordance theory in ESM contexts by empirically testing four central affordances, thereby further providing preliminary evidence for prior theoretical propositions by confirming that social media affordances might be associated with or influence relational ties. Second, the study integrates an affordance lens and a social network perspective to investigate employees’ perceived performance behavior. Including social network ties can offer a more detailed understanding of the underlying processes of how ESM affordances can and do affect job performance. Third, it supports the validity of distinguishing instrumental and expressive ties in ESM contexts, thus offering a possible explanation for the inconsistencies in prior research on the impact of social networks on employee outcomes. Finally, it also shows how two kinds of organizational performance (in-role and innovative) are somewhat differentially influenced by affordances and network ties.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the underlying mechanisms through which social media use for vertical and horizontal communication enhance employee performance.

To test the research model, the authors conducted a questionnaire survey in China. The authors used a customer panel database provided by a marketing research firm in China to identify appropriate respondents. Finally, the authors received 243 valid responses.

The authors find that social media use for vertical communication (SMUVC) is positively related to leader-member exchange (LMX) and social media use for horizontal communication (SMUHC) is positively related to team-member exchange (TMX). LMX and TMX are positively related to employee performance. LMX is positively associated with TMX. Besides, task complexity positively moderates the relationship between LMX and employee performance, while it negatively moderates the relationship between TMX and employee performance.

First, it adds to the literature by investigating the underlying mechanisms of how social media use for communication influences job performance. By identifying LMX and TMX as the underlying mechanisms, the authors make comprehensive considerations of how the vertical and horizontal relationships link the effect of social media use for communication on employee performance. Second, despite the growing evidence demonstrates that high-quality LMX and TMX can individually contribute to employee job performance, little research has considered both LMX and TMX relationships simultaneously and their effects on job performance. Finally, by establishing task complexity as a key moderator on the relationships between LMX and TMX and job performance, the study could explain the inconsistent findings in the literature that the effects of LMX and TMX are significant in some studies yet not significant in other studies.