Research on the influencing factors of agricultural product purchase willingness in social e-commerce situation

Social commerce is a derivative of the integration and development of e-commerce and social media. With network technology as the means and social media as the medium, social commerce encourages users to conduct social interaction, social trust, and user-generated content (UGC), and finally promotes the transformation of consumers’ purchasing behaviour [1]. The essence of social business is to realise and enhance business value. Some scholars believe that the essence of social commerce is to deliver business activities through online social interaction.

Clarifying the characteristics of social commerce is conducive to better understanding its essence. Therefore, in order to better explore the essence of social commerce, the characteristics of social commerce have been paid more and more attention by scholars. Dennison emphasised the important role of social commerce features such as social interaction, social relations and UGC in the development of e-commerce, thus dissecting the essence of social commerce [2]. Zhang Hong summarised the characteristics of social commerce as interactivity, personalisation and sociability, which he believed could fully reveal the essence of human–computer interaction and human–human interaction in social commerce [3]. Some domestic scholars also proposed that the characteristics of social business can be divided into technical and social characteristics. Between them, the technical characteristics are reflected in interaction and stickiness, while the social characteristics are reflected in word-of mouth recommendation, consumption experience and so on [4]. Therefore, in the final analysis, the most fundamental feature of social business is social interaction.

Social e-commerce is another new e-commerce model after social commerce. The founder of social e-commerce is Pinduoduo, the dark horse of e-commerce which has developed rapidly in recent years. Pinduoduo has achieved great success with its unique business model of ‘social networking + e-commerce’. People are also paying more and more attention to its operation, with ideas of integrating enterprising social elements into e-commerce. Wang Shilinsheng and Hu Lijia [5] believe that social e-commerce is a new business model in which merchants use social media software to weave a social network with attention, sharing and recommendation as the main elements, and actively release commodity information to increase exposure, so as to improve the transaction rate of commodities.

There are many similarities between social e-commerce and social commerce, but social e-commerce lays more emphasis on ‘socialisation’ and ‘e-commerce’, which is mainly reflected in the following aspects: under the context of social e-commerce, people are more active in interaction and more active in sharing information; the human–computer interaction and human–computer interaction are bidirectional, and so are the effects produced. Social trust continues to appreciate and becomes a key factor affecting the purchase intention of users. The trading place of business activities has shifted to online, and social e-commerce completes the trading activities in the virtual environment. The development of social e-commerce conforms to the development of the networked relation-based society, and at the same time has produced a huge influence. As Yan Huili and Peng Zhengyin have stated, social e-commerce has created a new space and opened a new road for the sustainable development of e-commerce in the Internet era [6].

SOR was proposed by Mehrabian and Russell. The core idea is that individuals conduct a series of avoidance or approach behaviours to some characteristics of their environment, which are affected by the intermediary factors such as individual emotional state. Among them, environmental variable (S) is an external stimulus that influences individual cognition and emotional response, and then influences individual behaviour. Body variable (O) is the individual's cognitive and emotional state, including perceived risk, perceived value and so on. Response (R) is the final behaviour and result, including approach response and avoidance response [7].

It can be seen that the ‘S-O-R’ theoretical model is an important theoretical model that describes the mechanism of the influence of internal and external factors on consumer purchasing behaviour. The willingness to buy agricultural products in the context of social e-commerce is actually a process of internal psychological activity changes caused by stimuli and then reactive behaviour [8].

In view of the external stimulus of consumers’ online purchase intentions, many scholars have discussed them based on social trust, social stickiness, social support and social interaction [9]. Of them, Fang Wenkan and Zhou Tao believe that interpersonal trust has a significant impact on consumers’ social purchase intentions and social sharing willingness [10]; Harris and Dennis and others have found that the social stickiness caused by strong and weak relationships between users is an important factor [11]. Hu Qian, Lin Jiabao and others noted that social support (information support, emotional support) will have a positive impact on consumers’ willingness to buy, and there is an intermediary effect [4]; Qiu Lihong and Ma Yuhui confirmed that the more interactive it is, the more willing consumers are to share their shopping experience. The more it stimulates the purchase desire of other users [12], the more it positively influences consumers’ willingness to buy fresh agricultural products online [13]. However, it should not be ignored that the characteristics of agricultural products are still an important factor affecting consumers’ willingness to buy in the context of social e-commerce.

In addition, in the intermediate transition of consumers from perceived goods to willing to buy, the psychological mechanism (O) of consumers is driven by the perceived value. In the classification of perceptual value, many scholars divide perceptual value into functional value, hedonistic value, and so on [14]. Sweeney and South recognise Functional value as the effective perception of the consumer's ability to function, practicality and natural attributes of the product; hedonistic value is the utility value of the product that makes the customer feel emotional, and is the psychological and emotional feeling of consumption [15, 16]. Therefore, consumer perceived value can be used as an intermediate variable for external stimuli to affect consumers’ willingness to buy.

In this paper, there are many potential variables that cannot be directly observed in the study of the influencing mechanism and path of agricultural product purchase intentions in the context of social e-commerce, so this paper designs the relationship model of various variables based on logical relationships, and selects the SEM to perform statistical analysis of the potential variables. The model includes 8 potential variables, of which social trust, social stickiness, social support, social interaction and characteristics of agricultural products are the premise variables, the perceived functional value and the perceived hedonic value are the intermediary variables, and the consumer's willingness to buy is the result variable: (1) η=Bη+Γξ+ζ \eta = B\eta + \Gamma \xi + \zeta (2) Y=Λyη+ϵ Y = \Lambda y\eta + \varepsilon (3) X=Λxξ+σX=Λxξ+σ X = \Lambda x\xi + \sigma X = \Lambda x\xi + \sigma where Eq. (1) is the structural model and Eqs. (2) and (3) are the measurement models. X and Y are vectors composed of exogenous variables and endogenous variables, respectively; ξ stands for exogenous potential variables, such as social trust, social stickiness, social support, social interaction and agricultural product characteristics, and η stands for endogenous potential variables, Perceive functional value and perceive hedonic value. B and Γ are the structural coefficient matrix, ζ is the residual matrix, Λy is the factor composite matrix of the endogenous explicit variable on the endogenous potential variable, Λx is the factor composite matrix of the exogenous potential variable and ɛσ is the residual matrix.

To verify the above hypothesis, this paper performs an empirical analysis through a questionnaire. The questionnaire includes two parts: the first is divided into personal basic information of the subject, and the second is a measurement scale of the variables related to the SEM. To ensure the validity of the questionnaire content, the variable section is measured using the Likert five-level scale, where 1–5 represent ‘very disagree’ to ‘very agree’. After the completion of the questionnaire design, two researchers in e-commerce were first invited to review the questionnaire, and revised the scale and questionnaire according to the feedback opinions to improve its quality. The final questionnaire was formed after repeated polishing and modification. Table 1 gives the final variables, indicators and their measurement items.

According to valid data, the proportion of male users is 31.78% and female users is 68.22%. Users aged 18–30 account for 85.85%, 9.5% aged 31–40, and then 40–50 and 50 years all above 0.39%. A total of 78% respondents had experience of online agricultural products, 85.27% respondents used Pinduoduo, while 61.24% used Little Red Book, and 39.92% used living goods (poison).

In order to test the reliability and validity of the measured variables, the factor analysis using SPSS and incorporating the latent variables into the SEM for CFA analysis yield the results given in Table 2.

First, the Cronbach's Alpha values of agricultural product characteristics of social trust, social viscosity, social support, social interaction, perceived function value, perceived pleasure value, and purchase intention are 0.721, 0.962, 0.838, 0.961, 0.924, 0.940, 0.950 and 0.944, all greater than 0.7, which shows the questionnaire reliability and good consistency, stability and reliability.

Second, the average extraction variance (AVE) of most latent variables is greater than 0.5 and the standard factor load of most measured items is more than 0.7 and significant at the level of 0.001 (p<0.001), so the measured items of the questionnaire have good validity.

Finally, the CR of each latent variable is greater than 0.6, which indicates that the scale can consistently explain the potential variables, with a good building confidence.

Based on the reliability and validity of the test data, AMOS software is used to conduct the structural equation analysis of the latent variables to verify whether the above assumptions are true.

First, evaluate the fit of the model, as shown in Table 3: CMIN = 2125.106, X²/df = 5.806, GFI = 0.761, RMR = 0.295, NFI = 0.854, CFI = 0.876, mostly greater than its recommended value, so the data and the model fit better.

Subsequently, under p<0.01, the significance examines the path coefficient of the model, with the results as shown in Figure 2. Among them, Social Trust for consumer-perceived functional value (β = 0.078, p<0.01) and consumer-perceived hedonistic value (β < 0.158, p<0.01) both showed significant positive effects. Value of social viscosity to the perceived function (β = 0.309, p < 0.01) and perceived pleasure value (β <0.125, p<0.01) both showed significant positive effects. Social support for value to perceived function (β = 0.125, p<0.01) and perceived pleasure value (β < 0.086, p<0.01) both showed significant positive effects; Value of social interaction to the perceived function (β = 0.403, p<0.01) and perceived pleasure value (β <0.510, p<0.01) both showed significant positive effects. Perceptual functional value and perceived pleasure value have an obvious positive impact on the willing to buy (β = 0.280, p<0.01) (β <0.721, p<0.01). However, the characteristics of agricultural products do not affect perceived value.

Fig. 2

Therefore, this hypothesis is supported except H5a and H5b. See the test results shown in Table 4.

In the context of social e-commerce, external environmental factors such as social trust, social stickiness, social support and social interaction stimulate consumers to make complex psychological processes such as comparative evaluation, thus indirectly affecting their willingness to buy agricultural products. Among the above external stimulus factors, social interaction has the greatest influence on consumers’ purchasing intention of agricultural products, followed by social stickiness, social trust and social support. This is mainly because in the context of social e-commerce, consumers pay more attention to social interaction and friendly relations between each other, pay more attention to effective information transmission and communication, and tend towards a relaxed and happy consumption environment, which also reflects the sociality of social e-commerce.

The level of purchasing intention of agricultural products directly depends on consumers’ perceived functional value and hedonic value. Perceived value is an internal psychological mechanism formed after consumers are stimulated by external stimuli, which directly affects their willingness to buy agricultural products. Different types of perceived value also have different effects on consumers’ purchasing intentions. Of them, perceived functional value has a greater impact, followed by hedonic value, which reflects the development trend of social e-commerce in its practicality, usefulness and rationality.

The quality, appearance, origin, packaging and other characteristics of agricultural products are also external stimulus factors, but they have not been proved to directly affect the perceived value of consumers. This may be because in the e-commerce environment that emphasises socialisation, interaction and stickiness, especially in the live streaming e-commerce that is prone to impulse consumption, consumers pay more attention to the external factors such as the friendly communication atmosphere in the consumption environment (broadcast room), while the importance of the characteristics of agricultural products is weakened to a certain extent. However, the characteristics of agricultural products should have a direct impact on consumers’ purchasing intention, and then directly determine consumers’ purchasing decision-making behaviour to a certain extent.

Based on the perspective of social e-commerce, this paper studies and analyses the key factors affecting consumers’ willingness to buy agricultural products, constructs a model of external stimulus factors such as social trust and social stickiness, as well as consumers’ perceived value and purchase intention, and verifies the model assumptions empirically. Therefore, the theoretical contributions of this paper are as follows:

First, in the context of social commerce, exploratory research and analysis of agricultural products buying intentions influencing factors. Many existing literatures focus on the impact of social commerce on consumers’ purchase intention, while few works specify the products consumers buy as agricultural products. Therefore, this paper can provide a more theoretical basis for exploring the influence mechanism of online purchase of agricultural products and provide more enlightenment for it.

Additionally, this paper innovatively introduces ‘social stickiness’ as a stimulus factor of social environment, and deeply analyses the impact of social stickiness on consumers’ perceived value and purchase intention, which provides an important reference value for enriching social commerce with social trust, social support and social interaction as its main features. It provides a new way to study the influence mechanism of social commerce on consumers’ purchase intention.

First, it provides new marketing ideas for social media operators of enterprises. For example, media operators should always detect and maintain user stickiness with target consumer groups, so as to ensure strong social relations with them and carry out community marketing. At the same time, users with strong social stickiness can be appropriately guided to expand the scope of the existing community by using their social relations.

Second, it is beneficial for enterprises to strengthen multi-channel and multi-media social interaction with target consumer groups and create a relaxed and pleasant consumption atmosphere. This not only enables agricultural product e-commerce enterprises to better understand existing and potential needs of consumers and their purchase influencing factors, but also enhances the intimacy, familiarity and trust between enterprises and consumers, promote the transformation of consumers’ purchasing behaviour and improve the transaction rate.

Finally, this paper conducts an in-depth study on the influencing factors of consumers’ purchase intention, which is conducive to enterprises’ better understanding of consumer psychology, so as to timely adjust marketing and promotion strategies, firmly grasp the users to improve the core competitiveness of enterprises, and improve the business model of social e-commerce enterprises.

Although this paper has contributed to the research on the influencing factors of purchasing intention of agricultural products in the context of social e-commerce, it is undeniable that there are still some defects. First, college students account for a large proportion of the respondents in the questionnaire, which will cause the similarity of the samples to some extent. Therefore, the scope of the respondents should be expanded. Second, based on social e-commerce, the types of agricultural products failed to be deeply segmented. Although the external stimulus factors are also social trust, social stickiness, social support and social interaction, consumers may have completely different purchasing intentions for different types of agricultural products. Finally, the characteristics of agricultural products are a very important external stimulus factor, and this paper failed to prove its influence on consumers’ perceived value. Future studies can introduce this variable to further explore its influence on the purchasing intention of agricultural products.