Page 161 - ISC PROCEEDINGS 21.4

THE EFFECTS OF PERCEIVED AUTONOMY AND ANTHROPOMORPHISM ON
RESISTANCE INTENTION:
THE MEDIATING ROLE OF INTRUSIVENESS RISK AND PRIVACY DISCLOSURE
RISK IN VIETNAM’S VIRTUAL STREAMER CONTEXT

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Pham Van Tuan* , Le Trong Vinh , Ho Quynh Trang , Nguyen Thi Hai Yen ,
1
Vu Duc Manh 5
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 National Economics University, Hanoi, Vietnam.
(*E-mail: phamvantuan@neu.edu.vn)

ABSTRACT
The rapid growth of ecommerce has driven businesses to increasingly adopt virtual
streamers as innovative alternatives to human hosts in livestreaming activities. This study
develops a research model to explore the factors influencing consumer resistance toward
this emerging technology by focusing on the tension between interaction quality and
cognitive risk evaluations. The research model incorporates five key components: (1)
Perceived autonomy, (2) Perceived anthropomorphism, (3) Intrusiveness risk, (4) Privacy
disclosure risk, and (5) Resistance intention. Data was collected through a structured
survey resulting in 389 valid responses from users across Vietnam. The study investigates
how these factors shape the psychological evaluations and behavioral responses of
consumers in the digital commerce landscape. The findings reveal that perceived
anthropomorphism significantly increases both intrusiveness and privacy disclosure risks,
while perceived autonomy heightens intrusiveness risk without significantly affecting
privacy disclosure risk. Consequently, these elevated risk perceptions act as the primary
drivers of user resistance intention. The results also highlight significant differences in
user perceptions based on education and income levels. Based on these insights, the
authors propose strategic recommendations for businesses and platform providers in the
Vietnamese market to effectively integrate artificial intelligence while balancing
technological innovation with user trust and data security.
Keywords: Artificial intelligence; consumer behavior; resistance intention; virtual
streamer.

1. Introduction
On a global scale, livestream commerce has increasingly established itself as an
emerging trend in the retail sector, driven by the convergence of real-time streaming
technologies and highly interactive shopping experiences for consumers (Chen et al., 2023;
Yun et al., 2023). In this context, the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence has
opened new opportunities for this industry, particularly through the emergence of virtual
streamers (Gao et al., 2025). Virtual streamers are defined as human-like digital entities
created through advanced technologies and endowed with a certain degree of autonomy,
enabling them to perform the role of livestream hosts through AI-driven algorithms
(Zhang et al., 2024). Beyond their increasing practical application, virtual streamers have
also attracted growing scholarly attention in recent years (Chen et al., 2025). Existing
studies on virtual streamers can generally be categorized into two primary approaches:
streamer-centered and consumer-centered perspectives (Chang et al., 2025). From the
former perspective, scholars focus on how specific attributes of virtual streamers, such as

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