Unlocking Impulse Buying in Emerging Economies: How Scarcity Messages, Perceived Risk, and Perceived Enjoyment Shape TikTok Shop Live Shopping Consumer Behavior in Indonesia

Abstract

The development of the live shopping feature on TikTok Shop encourages an increase in impulse buying behavior due to direct interaction and situational pressure that occurs in real-time. This study aims to analyze the influence of scarcity message, perceived risk, and perceived enjoyment on impulse buying in TikTok Shop users. The study used a quantitative approach with a non-probability purposive sampling technique on 153 respondents who used TikTok Shop in the Greater Jakarta area who had made unplanned purchases through the live shopping feature. The data was analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4 software. The results showed that scarcity message, perceived risk, and perceived enjoyment had a significant effect on impulse buying, with perceived risk as the most dominant variable (path coefficient -0.609; f2 = 1.170). These results show that risk perception remains an important factor that consumers consider when making purchases through the live shopping feature, so that changes in the level of risk perception also affect consumers' tendency to impulse buy. This study advances social commerce literature by demonstrating that perceived enjoyment, scarcity, and risk collectively drive impulse buying, offering a framework for understanding consumer behavior in live-stream environments. Entrepreneurs are advised to maximize engagement and urgency while reducing consumer risk through transparent, secure, and interactive selling techniques.