The Impact of Emotional Labor on User Stickiness in the Context of Livestreaming Service—Evidence From China

Abstract

Improving the user stickiness becomes increasingly valued, due to the severe user churn of livestreaming services. Previous studies pay much attention to the influencing factors of technology on user stickiness, ignoring the emotional factors. This study examined the impact of the emotional labor of network anchors (deep acting vs. surface acting) on user stickiness in the context of livestreaming service. We extended prior findings in three ways. The results of Study 1 (i.e., questionnaire method, 305 livestreaming users, and 56.4% females) demonstrated that the emotional labor of network anchor positively influenced user stickiness, and immersion experience plays a mediating role. The results of Study 2 (i.e., situational simulation method, 203 volunteers, and 54.09% females) demonstrated that the deep acting strategies of emotional labor had a stronger effect when compared with surface acting strategies. The results of Study 3 (i.e., situational simulation method, 235 volunteers, and 51.9% females) demonstrated that the effect of emotional labor on user stickiness was stronger for the users with prevention focus compared with promotion focus. Based on the perspective of emotional labor, this study extends the previous research on user stickiness and is valuable for guiding the practice of livestreaming services.

Formation mechanism of user stickiness in live e-commerce: the hybrid PLS-SEM and ANN approach

“…Expertise and trustworthiness affected streamer-brand preference through perceived information quality to impact user stickiness. This differs from the perspectives used in previous studies on the user stickiness of livestreaming (Bao and Zhu, 2023;Shen et al, 2022;Ma, 2023;Shi et al, 2021;.…”

“…Some scholars have researched product sales (Wang et al, 2023;Luo et al, 2021), sales performance (Liu et al, 2023a) and customer engagement (Qin et al, 2023;Yan et al, 2023;Zhai and Chen, 2023;Kang et al, 2021;Wongkitrungrueng and Assarut, 2020) in live e-commerce. Furthermore, researchers have studied the mechanism underlying stickiness from perspectives including the socio-technical approach , emotional labor (Shi et al, 2021), interactivity affordance (Ma, 2023), expectation confirmation theory (Shen et al, 2022) and information system success model (Bao and Zhu, 2023). The above studies have made significant contributions to the field of live e-commerce.…”

“…Meanwhile, research on user stickiness in live e-commerce is still limited. Some studies have conducted research on it from perspectives of the socio-technical approach , emotional labor (Shi et al, 2021), interactivity affordance (Ma, 2023), expectation confirmation theory (Shen et al, 2022) and information system success model (Bao and Zhu, 2023). However, there is still a research gap in exploring the formation mechanism of user stickiness from the perspective of streamer attributes, which has become the driving force of this study.…”

“…Furthermore, researchers have studied the mechanism underlying stickiness from perspectives including the socio-technical approach (Li et al. , 2021), emotional labor (Shi et al. , 2021), interactivity affordance (Ma, 2023), expectation confirmation theory (Shen et al.…”

The Spillover Effect of Emotional Labor: How It Shapes Frontline Employees’ Proactive Innovation Behavior

“…Emotional labor was first proposed by Hochschild who observed a common phenomenon where frontline employees managed their emotions to satisfy customers or meet the requirements of organization (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993;Grandey & Melloy, 2017). It was defined as the ''management of emotions to create a facial and bodily display in service encounter'' and was considered valuable by service organization because appropriate emotional labor can deliver high-level service quality, stimulate customers' positive mood, and thus elevate organizational performance (Choi et al, 2019;Hur et al, 2015;Shi et al, 2021).…”