The Impact of Customer Incivility on Streamers' Emotional Labor in E-commerce Live Streaming - The Mediating Role of Career Identity

With the rapid development of e-commerce live streaming, customer incivility has become increasingly prominent. However, the mechanism of its impact on streamers' emotional labor remains unclear. This study focuses on e-commerce live streaming streamers and, based on the stimulation-organism-response (S-O-R) theory, explores the impact of customer incivility on streamers' emotional labor with career identity as a mediator. An online survey was conducted with 299 streamers from Chinese e-commerce live streaming platforms. The results show that customer incivility directly affects streamers' emotional labor, reduces their career identity, and that career identity directly influences emotional labor. Moreover, career identity plays a partial mediating role between customer incivility and streamers' emotional labor. This study complements existing research in the field, verifies the applicability of the theory, provides theoretical insights for the management of e-commerce live streaming businesses, and contributes to the healthy development of the e-commerce live streaming industry.