Digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) are driving the growth of live-streaming e-commerce. As a result, a rising number of virtual anchors who are appearing in live-streaming e-commerce, generating customer engagement. However, whether the virtual anchor driven by different types of AI–human collaboration has different impacts on consumer engagement needs to be further investigated. By adopting the use and gratifications theory, this paper investigated the mechanism of the virtual anchor driven by AI–human collaboration on consumer engagement and the moderating effect of the humorous response. The results of two studies demonstrated that the virtual anchor driven by assisted AI–human collaboration contributed to higher levels of perceived playfulness than those driven by supervised AI–human collaboration, leading to increased customer engagement. Meanwhile, it was found that the differences between the supervised and assisted virtual anchor driven by AI–human collaboration on perceived playfulness decrease when the humorous response is present. This paper fills in the gap in virtual anchor research by providing insights into how to enhance the positive effect of customer engagement and giving suggestions for future research on virtual anchors.

人工智能（AI）等数字技术正在推动直播电商的增长。因此，越来越多的虚拟主播出现在直播电商中，产生了客户参与度。然而，不同类型的人工智能与人类协作驱动的虚拟主播是否对消费者参与度产生不同的影响还需要进一步研究。本文采用使用与满足理论，研究了人工智能与人类协作驱动的虚拟主播对消费者参与度的影响机制以及幽默反应的调节作用。两项研究的结果表明，与受监督的人工智能与人类协作驱动的虚拟主播相比，由辅助人工智能与人类协作驱动的虚拟主播可带来更高水平的感知游戏性，从而提高客户参与度。同时，研究发现，当存在幽默反应时，由人工智能与人类协作驱动的监督虚拟主播和辅助虚拟主播之间在感知游戏性方面的差异会减小。本文填补了虚拟主播研究的空白，对如何增强客户参与的积极效应提供了见解，并为虚拟主播的未来研究提供了建议。