Understanding trust and attachment transfer in the context of live streaming: an empirical investigation

The paper aims to investigate the trust-attachment mechanism and understand how viewers build trust relationships in the live-streaming context. We build a theoretical model by incorporating the characteristics of the brand, live streaming, and streamer to understand the trust-attachment mechanism in live streaming. 359 useful survey responses were collected. The results identified antecedents of viewers’ trust perceptions. Trust transfer from live streaming to brand and streamer, the positive effects of trust in brands and streamer on attachment to brands, and the positive association between trust in streamers and attachment to streamers were also confirmed. This study contributed to the live streaming studies by developing a theoretical model to uncover the trust-attachment mechanism and understand the trust transfer mechanism. The high flow of customer traffic brought by the streamers does not necessarily transfer to the fixed customers of the brand. The current work has originality in investigating (1) different categories of viewers’ attachment (2) the influence of diverse types of trust on attachment and (3) the attachment transfer phenomenon in live streaming.