The Mediating Role of Presence on Consumer Intention to Participate in a Social Commerce Site

Abstract

This study investigated how presence affected consumer intention to participate in a social commerce site (i.e., the consumer participation intention of social commerce through the presence role), based on the stimulus-organism-response framework. An organism's internal states in the social commerce context were composed of two tiered states: presence and affect/cognition. For the benefit of parsimony, social presence and telepresence were chosen as dimensions of presence, and usefulness and enjoyment were chosen as affect and cognition variables. The analysis results showed that social presence and telepresence played mediating roles between stimuli (interactivity and vividness) and the sequent internal states (usefulness and enjoyment). Both usefulness and enjoyment significantly influenced the response of the organism (i.e., the consumer participation intention of social commerce). Therefore, it was demonstrated that the mediating role of presence was of great significance in the social commerce context.