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In recent years, social media influencers (SMIs) have become independent entities capable of influencing their audiences. Businesses look towards SMIs on Instagram as a marketing communication tool due to their popularity and effectiveness. In tourism, few studies investigate the role of SMI in influencing travel behaviors. The study examines how SMI can influence Instagram followers' travel behaviors. This study determined SMI based on attractiveness, similarity, and expertise. SMI can generate parasocial interactions with followers and build trust by promoting destinations based on these three dimensions. This study tested the research hypothesis on 364 respondents using a dual-approach analysis of structural equation modeling and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis. The results of the SEM analysis confirm that consumers were more likely to trust SMI based on their expertise and similarity. Also, this study demonstrated that highly attractive SMI and similarity with followers can lead to parasocial interactions. When consumers trust and feel parasocial interaction with SMI, they are more likely to consider traveling. FsQCA results confirm the presence of two configurations with high travel intention. The causal conditions configuration presented in this study demonstrated the interdimensional relationship between SMIs (attractiveness, similarity, and expertise), trust, and parasocial interaction in terms of travel intention. This study also achieved theoretical contributions and managerial implications on how scholars and tourism managers leverage SMIs to create high travel intentions. Doi: 10.28991/ESJ-2023-07-01-02 Full Text: PDF

AbstractVideo‐on‐demand platforms encourage binge‐watching (BW) to stimulate consumers' paid subscription. Despite decades of research, prior studies have yet to reach a consensus on the definition of BW, which results in inconsistent findings regarding its effect on paid subscription behavior. Drawing on stimuli‐organism‐response theory and parasocial interaction studies, we develop a conceptual model to explore the causal mechanism that links BW, the consumer organism (attractiveness, identification, involvement, and parasocial interaction), and responses (impulsive paid subscription). We also investigate how the boundary condition of BW (number of episodes watched) affects this causal mechanism. We conducted an online survey and two quasi‐field experiments to collect data and verify the hypotheses. Our findings confirm that, compared with non‐BW, BW offers enhanced attractiveness, identification, involvement, and parasocial interaction, which results in more impulsive paid subscription behavior. Moreover, it is valid to define BW as watching at least three episodes of a program, which reveals significant differences in viewers' impulsive paid subscription behavior. Implications for future BW research and marketing strategies for video‐on‐demand platforms are discussed.

In this study, we discussed the antecedents of online game adoption based on the technology acceptance model. A total of 303 valid questionnaires were collected and hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. Results showed that telepresence positively influences parasocial
interaction, perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEU), and perceived playfulness (PP). Parasocial interaction was found to have a positive impact on subjective norms (SN), PU, and PP. In addition, SN positively influenced image (Im) and PEU positively influenced PU and PP. Finally,
behavioral intention to use (BIU) online games was found to be positively affected by SN, PU, PEU, and PP.

This experimental study examined how varying the degree of immersiveness of a short documentary about a remote health issue influenced users' reported spatial presence, empathic parasocial interaction, and individual issue involvement. Higher-order responses, namely, the desire for information and willingness to donate to the cause, were also analyzed. The documentary was shown to 85 participants using three different technologies with varying degrees of immersiveness (high, moderate, and low). The results show that the level of the technology's immersiveness gradually increases the spatial presence, empathic parasocial interaction, and issue involvement of the user. While participants of the highly immersive condition reported a higher desire for additional information, the results on donation behavior were less conclusive.

Star worship is an ever-growing phenomenon around the globe. Across various social media platforms in China, a new idol–fan relationship model has emerged, such that the fans have stepped up from merely worshipping the idols to being able to co-cultivate their idols, including their public images, the scope of their work, and even their personal lives. Based on a grounded theory approach, this study utilized text analysis and in-depth interviews to explore parakin relationships between fans and idols and proposed a dual motivation model to explain the motivations of fans for forming such a relationship. The findings extend current fandom literature by exploring a new front of fan–idol interactions in the context of social media. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Scholars have documented growth in media coverage and popular discourse focusing on politicians' personal lives— personalization. Candidates use social media and personalization to circumvent mainstream news media, disrupting conventional processes. This personalization arguably increases voters' reliance on personal characteristics as voting heuristics. An online experiment exposed more than a thousand US adults to personalized or policy/campaigning tweets from a male or female US Senator running for re-election. Candidates who personalized elicited higher evaluations of social presence and parasocial interaction. For female candidates who shared a supported party with a respondent, personalization leads to feelings of perceived presence and parasocial interaction. Ultimately, the feelings of intimacy created by personalized tweets led respondents to express support for personalizing candidates, but this effect is contingent upon the gender and in-party status of the candidate.

This paper tackles the issue of health and well-being misinformation, the dissemination of false or misleading information related to medical treatments, diseases, mental health, nutrition, exercise or general well-being, propagated by social media influencers. It investigates the virality of misinformation posts by TikTok and Instagram influencers exploring users' appraisals and their sharing tendencies. Grounded in social influence and cognitive appraisal theories (CAT), three online experimental studies dissect the dynamics of virality, user comments and their effects on perceived deception, parasocial interaction and sharing intent. The results of Study 1 demonstrate heightened post virality reduces perceived deception, fostering stronger parasocial connections and sharing intentions. Conversely, lower virality levels heighten deception perceptions. In Study 2, critical comments are shown to enhance deception in high virality posts. Whereas supportive comments are shown to enhance the indirect effect of low virality posts on sharing intentions, via deception and parasocial interaction. The study contributes by demonstrating how social influence theory and CAT together explain how social media influencer misinformation posts based on their virality and user responses are likely to be shared and what consumer appraisals explain this effect. It provides directions of how marketers can tackle this issue.

Despite rapid advancements in robotics, most people still only come into contact with robots via mass media. Consequently, robot-related attitudes are often discussed as the result of habituation and cultivation processes, as they unfold during repeated media exposure. In this paper, we introduce parasocial contact theory to this line of research— arguing that it better acknowledges interpersonal and intergroup dynamics found in modern human–robot interactions. Moreover, conceptualizing mediated robot encounters as parasocial contact integrates both qualitative and quantitative aspects into one comprehensive approach. A multi-method experiment offers empirical support for our arguments: Although many elements of participants' beliefs and attitudes persisted through media exposures, valenced parasocial contact resulted in small but meaningful changes to mental models and desired social distance for humanoid robots.

PurposeThe emergence of social media has brought the influencer marketing landscape to an unprecedented level, where many ordinary people are turning into social media influencers. The study aims to construct and validate a model to yield strategic insights on the relevance of content curation, influencer–fans interaction and parasocial relationships development in fostering favorable endorsement outcomes (i.e. purchase intention).Design/methodology/approachThe present study analyzes data from a survey of 411 consumers using partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to understand the net and combined effects of content attributes, interaction strategies and parasocial relationships on purchase intention.FindingsPLS-SEM results reveal that content attributes (i.e. prestige and expertise) and interaction strategies (i.e. interactivity and self-disclosure) positively influence parasocial relationships, and in turn, lead to high purchase intention. Findings from fsQCA indicate six solutions with different combinations of content attributes, interaction strategies and parasocial relationships that sufficiently explain high purchase intention.Originality/valueThe present study demonstrates the roles of content attributes and interaction strategies in engendering parasocial relationship and the endorsement outcome (i.e. purchase intention) from both linear and non-linear (complexity) perspectives.

Our objective was to explore the psychological origins of media gratifications by examining how pertinent psychological variables, based on McGuire's paradigm, help explain television viewing motivation. Hierarchical multiple regression of responses from a quota sample of 331 persons showed that psychological antecedents and control variables helped predict viewing motivation. Parasocial interaction, anxiety, creativity, and sensation seeking's disinhibition dimension were the most substantial predictors, along with television affinity and exposure. We discussed the implications of these findings.

"The introductory chapter summarises the theoretical approaches taken in this book, highlighting the unique contributions that a media psychological approach can make to our understanding of news making and the construction of meaning. The authors present an overview of how psychology can contribute to our understanding of news, and describe in relation to journalism uniquely media psychological constructs (parasocial interactions and the third person effect). This Introduction concludes with a chapter-by-chapter summary of the rest of the book"--

A preliminary study was conducted to content-analyze random samples of two teleshopping programs (The Fashion Channel and Quality Value Convenience Network), using a measure of content interactivity and a locus of control message index. QVC spent more time in high parasocial interaction as well as low interaction, while The Fashion Channel was highest on medium interaction. QVC also offered significantly more external positive and negative messages than The Fashion Channel. Based on the indications of previous research, it appears that QVC was better tailoring its message for its intended target audience than The Fashion Channel was at the time of the study.

Taking the soap opera as a case study, this book explores the "parasocial interaction" people engage in with television programs. It looks at the nature of the "active viewer" and the role of the text in social psychology. It also investigates the existing theoretical models offered by social psychology and other discourses. This second edition takes into account recent research work and theoretical developments in fields such as narrative psychology, social representation theory and ethnographic work on audiences, and looks at the developing role of audience research. --Publisher

This essay explores a set of new media user trends that are (re)shaping fan–athlete interaction through (para)social connections. Acting as bonding agents, the trends considered either contribute to or detract from membership in the community of sport. Accordingly, social leveling practices, invitational uses, and bridging functions serve to connect people within the community of sport, whereas policing, maladaptive parasocial interaction, and hypermasculinity function to disconnect people from the community of sport. The essay looks at these trends in detail and provides examples of each in practice. It concludes with a discussion of the digital literacy implications that fan–athlete interaction via new media introduces.