Trust-centered persuasion in live-stream commerce in China: Platform affordances, presence, and goal-contingent pathways to purchase intention

Live-stream commerce in China blends diagnostic evaluation with immersive experience. Using SEM, bootstrapped mediation, and multi-group invariance tests on survey data from 344 Chinese consumers, the study identifies an empirical pattern in which information and service quality are positively associated with trust, trust shows the strongest positive association with purchase intention, and presence shows a comparatively modest direct association and did not emerge as a statistically supported mediating pathway in the present data. Affordance effects are differentiated: metavoicing is positively associated with both trust and presence, emotional affordance is primarily associated with presence, and visibility shows weak structural relevance in this setting. Multi-group SEM further suggests broad goal-contingent cue salience across utilitarian- and hedonic-oriented consumers, clarifying when interaction- versus quality-based mechanisms appear more salient.