TikTok short-form financial content impact on retail investor decisions in Bangladesh an elaboration likelihood model perspective

Abstract The rapid emergence of TikTok as a short-form video platform has fundamentally reshaped the ways in which retail investors, particularly younger and less experienced users, access, process, and act upon financial information. Despite the platform’s growing prominence, scholarly understanding of the mechanisms through which TikTok financial content influences investor decision-making remains limited. Drawing on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), this study examines both cognitive and heuristic pathways that underlie investor responses to TikTok content, focusing on how central route processing (CRP) and peripheral route processing (PRP) mediate the relationship between content characteristics and financial behavior. Data were collected via a structured survey from 320 retail investors who actively engage with TikTok for financial information. Key content features—including credibility, clarity, engagement, informational quality, and popularity cues—were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to assess their effects on CRP, PRP, investment intention, and risk-taking behavior. The results indicate that high-quality, credible, and engaging content significantly enhances CRP, which in turn strengthens investment intentions and subsequently drives risk-taking behavior. In contrast, PRP primarily attracts attention and heuristic evaluation, exerting a comparatively limited influence on actual trading behavior. These findings underscore the primacy of cognitive elaboration over heuristic cues in shaping investment outcomes and provide both a theoretical extension of the Elaboration Likelihood Model and practical guidance for regulators, educators, content creators, and social media platforms seeking to foster informed and responsible retail investing.