Active or avoidance coping? Influencing mechanisms of streamers' coping strategies on viewers’ word of mouth after livestreaming e-commerce failures

Livestreaming e-commerce, as an emerging form of e-retailing and livestreaming monetization, is developing rapidly throughout the world. In the realm of livestreaming e-commerce, streamers inevitably need to cope with potential failures. However, few existing studies have examined livestreaming e-commerce failures, making it difficult to understand what strategies streamers can utilize to cope with these failures and how different strategies influence viewers' word of mouth (WOM). Building on social exchange and attribution theories, this study proposes two types of coping strategies (active and avoidance coping) and establishes a moderated-mediation model to explore the differential impact mechanisms of these coping strategies on viewers' WOM. Based on two-wave time-lagged data collected among 251 consumers who had experienced livestreaming e-commerce failures, results of a PLS-SEM analysis show that active coping has an indirect positive impact on viewers' WOM, while avoidance coping has an indirect negative impact on viewers’ WOM, both of which are fully mediated by cognitive and affective trust. Livestreaming e-commerce failure severity weakens the indirect negative effect of avoidance coping on WOM via both cognitive and affective trust. These findings advance our understanding of service recovery mechanisms in the context of livestreaming e-commerce failures and indicate that streamers can utilize active coping to alleviate the negative impacts of livestreaming e-commerce failures and recover from the failures. •Clarify what coping strategies livestreamers can utilize after failure.•Active coping is positively related to cognitive and affective trusts of viewers.•Avoidance coping is negatively related to cognitive and affective trusts of viewers.•Cognitive and affective trusts are positively related to viewers' word of mouth.•Livestreaming e-commerce failure severity is a crucial moderator.