#SPONSORED: The Impacts of Social Media Sponsorship Disclosure on Consumer Engagement, Attitudes, and Purchase Intentions

The influencer marketing industry has grown from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $16.4 billion in 2022 (Santora, 2023), significantly impacting the social media consumption habits of consumers (Lou & Yuan, 2019). In many countries, influencers are required to disclose that their content has been sponsored (Lee & Kim, 2020); however, this kind of disclosure has been shown to activate persuasion knowledge in consumers, which is associated with increased resistance to persuasion and negative attitudes towards the brand (Lee & Kim, 2020; Evans et al., 2017). Using secondary data from the comment sections of sponsored and unsponsored Instagram reels, this content analysis examined how the presence of sponsorship disclosures impacted engagement, consumer attitudes, and purchase intentions. The results of Research Question 1 demonstrated that sponsored posts had 66% fewer comments than unsponsored posts. The results of Research Question 2 indicated that unsponsored posts were associated with more positive comments and fewer negative comments than sponsored posts. The results of Research Question 3 showed no clear impacts of sponsorship disclosure on purchase intention.