Dual mechanisms of digital service recovery: the central role of emotional autonomy in live commerce

초록

Digital retailing increasingly relies on algorithmic and real-time interactions, yet little is known about whether consumers recover from service failures primarily through perceived fairness or by restoring emotional autonomy. This study investigates this question using survey data from 1,125 Chinese live-commerce consumers who recently experienced a service failure. Four theoretically grounded structural models were compared using a nested-model framework to evaluate alternative recovery mechanisms, and the integrated dual-path model, which incorporates both cognitive and affective-motivational processes, showed the best fit among the specified alternatives. By explicitly theorizing recovery as unfolding through these two distinct psychological pathways, the study contributes to a mechanism-based account of how digital recovery cues shape consumer responses. Emotional autonomy was consistently associated with recovery satisfaction and post-recovery reengagement, and provides additional explanatory insight alongside traditional justice-based perspectives. Procedural transparency and authenticity were found to be positively associated with emotional autonomy, although authenticity showed no direct effect on reengagement at the aggregate level. Exploratory latent-class analysis provides supplementary evidence of substantial segment heterogeneity, with authenticity predicting reengagement only among a high-evaluation subgroup. These findings highlight the role of emotional autonomy as an important psychological mechanism in digital service recovery and offer theoretical implications that extend existing service recovery frameworks, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of how consumers evaluate and reengage with platforms in live-commerce environments.

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