Purpose This paper explores factors that affect ethnic minority groups' (EMGs) motivation to promote online-entrepreneurship in live streaming economy. In addition to applying the push–pull theory, this paper draws on the liberal-conversative thinking theory and explores influencing factors from three aspects, including push, pull and emotional aspects. Design/methodology/approach Based on the partial least squares path modelling and variance-based structural equation modelling method (PLS-SEM), this study analyses 789 valid online questionnaires from 39 different EMGs, and 10 hypotheses can be supported, such as platform support, policy support, platform using skills and EMG cultural knowledge. The study also measures the importance-performance map analysis (IPMA) to explore additional findings of influencing factors and discusses managerial implications. Findings By analysing and comparing, EMG cultural knowledge has significantly high performance and importance for EMGs' online-entrepreneurship motivation, which should be focused on by related departments. With more and more EMG users promoting online-entrepreneurships on live streaming platforms, not only can their standard of living be improved, but their cultural resources can also be further disseminated with the help of live streaming economy. Originality/value Combined with EMGs' living environment, the push, pull and emotional factors can be divided into five basic units: social, economic, technical, psychological and cultural constraints. The cohesion between horizontal division (like push, pull and emotional factors) and vertical division (like social, economic and cultural influences) make the research model systematic.
Li et al. (2026) studied this question.