Abstract

Women largely dominate the influencer business, and previous studies often either have focused on female social media influencers, or else matched the influencer’s gender with the participant’s gender in experimental research, as it is assumed that same-gender endorsements may increase persuasion. However, no empirical research is available yet that examines how the influencer’s gender affects the persuasiveness of sponsored content posted by this influencer. Therefore, this paper reports on the results from an experimental study (N = 241) testing whether a sponsored post leads to more engagement and greater brand attitude when endorsed by a male vs. a female influencer, and whether the participants’ gender moderates this effect. The results revealed no main effects of an influencer’s gender, however, an interaction effect was found with participants’ gender. More specific, and in line with social identity theory, results suggest that women perceive themselves to be more similar to the female compared to the male influencer, leading to stronger feelings of parasocial interaction, which in turn positively affect brand attitude and post engagement. For men, no differences were found between a male and female influencer on brand attitude nor post engagement through perceived similarity and parasocial interaction. These findings’ implications will be discussed further.

摘要

女性在很大程度上主导了影响者业务，之前的研究通常要么关注女性社交媒体影响者，要么在实验研究中将影响者的性别与参与者的性别相匹配，因为假设同性别的认可可能会增加说服力。然而，目前还没有实证研究来检验影响者的性别如何影响该影响者发布的赞助内容的说服力。因此，本文报告了一项实验研究的结果（N = 241）测试赞助帖子在男性和女性影响者的支持下是否会带来更多的参与度和更好的品牌态度，以及参与者的性别是否会调节这种影响。结果显示，影响者的性别没有主要影响，但是，参与者的性别存在交互作用。更具体地说，与社会认同理论一致，结果表明，与男性影响者相比，女性认为自己与女性更相似，从而导致更强烈的准社会互动感，进而对品牌态度和帖子参与度产生积极影响。对于男性，男性和女性影响者在品牌态度和通过感知相似性和准社会互动后参与度方面没有发现差异。这些发现的影响将进一步讨论。