Exploring the potential of live music snippets on TikTok to motivate user engagement and concert ticket purchases: An experimental approach to understanding the roles of fear of missing out, social connectedness, and counterarguing

Short videos recorded by visitors or artists themselves at live concerts using their smartphones have become popular content on TikTok. While some research has already examined the motives of those filming, the impact of these concert snippets on the recipients, i.e. TikTok users in front of their smartphone screens, remains still unexplored. In two experimental online studies (n = 234 and n = 261) conducted in Germany in 2024, we address the questions of how content-related and context-related factors influence the reception experience and ultimately the intention for user engagement and the purchase of concert tickets. Results show that social richness in the videos indirectly increases both behavioral intentions via the experience of social connectedness. User comments influence the extent of counterarguing, but do not indirectly contribute to behavioral intentions. Fear of missing out emerges as a key predictor of behavioral intentions but is not elicited by the content and context factors on TikTok examined here.