Effects of Humorous, Emotional, and Rational Host Language Styles on Impulsive Purchase Intention in Livestreaming Commerce

Abstract

This study examines the effects of e-commerce hosts’ humorous, emotional, and rational language appeals on consumers’ impulsive purchase intention in livestreaming commerce. Drawing on Flow Theory, the study develops a moderated mediation framework in which flow experience serves as a mediator and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) serves as a moderator. Data were collected from 420 Chinese consumers who had watched e-commerce livestreams within the previous year. Structural equation modeling was used to test the direct and indirect relationships, while SPSS PROCESS was employed to examine the moderating effects. The results show that humorous, emotional, and rational appeals each have a significant positive effect on impulsive purchase intention. Flow experience significantly mediates the relationships between all three language appeals and impulsive purchase intention. In addition, eWOM positively moderates the relationship between host language style and impulsive purchase intention. However, its moderating effect on the relationship between flow experience and impulsive purchase intention is not significant. These findings extend the application of Flow Theory to livestreaming commerce by showing how host communication influences impulsive purchase intention through consumers’ experiential states and how this relationship may vary according to external online evaluations.