<![CDATA[Objective: This study aims to examine the psychological mechanisms underlying impulsive buying in live-streaming commerce. It investigates how atmospheric (time and quantity of pressure) and social stimuli (streamer presence, social influence, credibility) influence impulsive purchases, evaluating the mediating role of arousal and the moderating effect of financial capacity. Design/Methods/Approach: Data from 238 active e-commerce live-streaming users, collected via purposive sampling, were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to assess direct, indirect, and moderating effects. Findings: All atmospheric and social stimuli significantly enhance emotional arousal, with streamer credibility having the strongest impact. Arousal positively drives impulsive buying and mediates the relationship between external stimuli and purchasing responses. While financial capacity was evaluated as an economic boundary condition, it does not significantly moderate the arousal-purchase relationship, indicating that emotional urges bypass self-reported economic constraints. Originality/Value: This study contributes to the existing literature on the S-O-R framework by integrating atmospheric and socio-cognitive stimuli to explain impulsive consumption. It extends prior literature by re-examining financial capacity as an economic boundary condition within a hyper-frictionless digital ecosystem. In doing so, it provides novel evidence of a boundary condition failure: demonstrating that in highly immersive live commerce settings, impulsive consumption is so profoundly emotion-driven that it completely overrides the consumer's traditional economic constraints. Practical/Policy implication: Managers are advised to prioritize credible streamers to build trust and emotional engagement rather than relying solely on aggressive scarcity tactics. Furthermore, sellers should strategically orchestrate authentic scarcity cues, such as synchronized inventory trackers, to complement the social experience without causing consumer fatigue.]]>
