Does ethics perception foster hotel booking intention in livestreaming commerce platform? A cognitive-affective perspective

Livestreaming commerce is expanding rapidly in hospitality, yet existing research has largely emphasized hedonic and social drivers and has paid limited attention to ethics-related cues that can be decisive in high-involvement, higher-risk decisions such as hotel booking. Addressing this gap, this study examines how ethics perceptions in hotel livestreaming shape booking intention through cognitive – affective mechanisms, drawing on the Stimulus – Organism – Response (S–O–R) framework and the Cognitive – Affective Personality System (CAPS). Ethics perceptions are operationalized via six cues – surveillance transparency, remuneration fairness, fulfillment reliability, streamer ethics, privacy protection, and non-deception. A three-wave survey of 312 Saudi consumers with recent hotel livestreaming experience was analyzed using PLS-SEM. Results indicate that non-deception and privacy protection strengthen both emotional arousal and self-efficacy, while fulfillment reliability and remuneration primarily enhance self-efficacy and surveillance influences arousal only. Streamer ethics shows limited effects, suggesting that credibility is anchored more in transaction- and platform-level assurances than in presenter-level impressions in this setting. Emotional arousal and self-efficacy jointly increase perceived pleasure, which subsequently predicts hotel booking intention. Contrary to common assumptions, social presence weakens the pleasure – intention relationship, implying that heightened interactivity may introduce distraction or evaluative pressure that dampens conversion-oriented motivation in hotel livestreaming.