Ability Orientation or Good Character? Moderated Mediation Mechanism to Determine the Impact of Telepresence on Consumer Purchasing Intention in Cross-Border E-Commerce

Haijin Gui; Untung Rahardja; Xianchuan Yang; Yan Yan

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.883101

Ability Orientation or Good Character? Moderated Mediation Mechanism to Determine the Impact of Telepresence on Consumer Purchasing Intention in Cross-Border E-Commerce

Front Psychol. 2022 May 6:13:883101. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.883101. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Haijin Gui^{1

2}, Untung Rahardja³, Xianchuan Yang¹, Yan Yan¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Business, Wuxi Vocational Institute of Commerce, Wuxi, China.
² Synergetic Innovation Research Base of Digital Business Development of Jiangsu Province, Wuxi, China.
³ Science and Technology Faculty, University of Raharja, Tangerang, Indonesia.

Abstract

A research model is proposed based on the telepresence theory to determine the long-term mechanism for generating consumer purchasing intention and explore potential information haze caused by information overload. A total of 406 usable samples were collected from the consumers of several cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) platforms in China. The results showed that telepresence has a positive effect on benevolence trust, integrity trust, and ability trust. As expected, benevolence trust and ability trust were found to exhibit significant mediation effects, while integrity trust did not have a significant mediation role. The moderated mediation mechanism shows that product information (description, display, and content) restrain mediation paths. The findings provide new perspectives on the information haze caused by information overload. The results suggest that promoting an ability-oriented (ability trust) business philosophy and instilling good corporate character (benevolence trust) are vital in achieving sustainable development in CBEC platforms. Eliminating information haze could also help strengthen the activation effect of telepresence and promote the guiding role of customer trust on purchasing intention. This study's theoretical and management contributions extend our knowledge of optimizing management strategies for CBEC platforms.

Keywords: cross-border e-commerce; customer trust; information haze; moderated mediation model; telepresence.