Abstract: The impact of elements of e-commerce livestreams on consumers’ psychology and behavior is explored to provide suggestions for the traditional e-commerce platform to enhance its influence. Based on the stimulus-organism-response model, the pathways of elements of e-commerce livestreams on consumers’ willingness of word-of-mouth recommendation are researched and the mediating effect of consumers’ trust (including trust in both the anchor and the platform) is verified. The results indicate that anchors’ charm, interactive atmosphere, high-quality content, and platform quality significantly affect trust in the platforms; anchors’ charm and interactive atmosphere significantly affect trust in anchors, while high-quality content and platform quality have no significant impact on trust in anchors; high-quality content can directly affect the willingness of word-of-mouth recommendation, while anchors’ charm, interactive atmosphere and platform quality cannot; trust in platforms significantly affects trust in anchors. Trust in anchors and platforms can significantly affect the willingness of word-of-mouth recommendation; trust in anchors plays a significant mediating role among anchors’ charm, interactive atmosphere and consumers’ willingness of word-of-mouth recommendation, while trust in platforms and anchors plays an effective chain mediating role among interactive atmosphere, high-quality content, platform quality and consumers’ willingness of word-of-mouth recommendation.

Key words: e-commerce livestream, consumers’ trust, stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model, willingness of word-of-mouth recommendation