Look at Me in VR Live Streaming: How Streamer Gaze Drives Purchase Intention Through Feeling Attended to and Social Presence

As VR live streaming becomes an emerging form of immersive retailing, understanding how consumers respond to streamers’ social cues is increasingly important. Drawing on social presence theory, this research examines how streamer gaze in VR live streaming influences purchase intention and investigates the underlying mechanism and boundary condition. We propose that streamer gaze increases purchase intention by enhancing consumers’ feeling attended to, and in turn, social presence, and that this process is shaped by virtual space scale. Three studies provide convergent support for this framework. Study 1, using a retrospective survey and structural equation modeling with 386 participants, offers initial evidence for the proposed relationships. Study 2, using an immersive VR experiment with 160 participants, provides causal support for the serial mediation mechanism. Study 3, using a 2 × 2 immersive VR experiment with 240 participants, further shows that the positive effect of streamer gaze is stronger in smaller virtual spaces than in larger ones. This research contributes to the literature on VR retailing, live-streaming commerce, and social presence by identifying streamer gaze as a concrete nonverbal cue that shapes consumer responses in immersive selling environments.