Performing swift guanxi: relational trust mechanisms in an Indonesian live-streaming commerce context

Purpose This study aims to examine how live streaming streamers’ performance strategies foster swift guanxi, a rapidly formed relational bond characterized by mutual understanding, reciprocal favor and relationship harmony, and how this process shapes trust in the streamer and purchase intention in Indonesia’s live streaming commerce. It further investigates whether product involvement changes the relative salience of the three swift guanxi dimensions as trust cues. Design/methodology/approach An online survey of 528 Indonesian consumers with live streaming shopping experience was conducted and analyzed using covariance-based structural equation modeling. Performance strategies were specified as a second-order construct reflected by frontstage/backstage management, role-playing and improvisation, interactive engagement and dramatized atmosphere and multi-group analysis assessed moderation by product involvement. Findings Performance strategies were positively associated with the three swift guanxi dimensions, which in turn increased trust in the streamer; trust positively predicted purchase intention. Bootstrapping supported a significant serial indirect effect from performance strategies to purchase intention through swift guanxi and trust, and alternative model comparisons indicated no improvement when adding direct strategies to purchase path. Product involvement moderated the swift guanxi to trust links: mutual understanding was more influential under high involvement, whereas reciprocal favor and relationship harmony were stronger under low involvement. Originality/value The study bridges a dramaturgical performance view with swift guanxi to explain rapid trust formation in Indonesian live streaming commerce and specifies involvement-contingent boundary conditions that shift the weighting of cognitive versus affective relational trust cues.