Blind trust? The importance and interplay of parasocial relationships and advertising disclosures in explaining influencers’ persuasive effects on their followers

With the rise of social media, social media influencers (SMIs) have steadily gained importance as brand endorsers by establishing strong parasocial relationships (PSRs) with their followers. These PSRs, however, have been neglected in previous experimental studies on SMIs because they used non-followers as their study participants. This paper, therefore, analyzes the impact of SMIs on their respective followers and reports the results of two experiments. The first experiment (N = 144) confirmed that follower status (non-followers/followers) affected the strength of PSRs, source credibility, and evaluation of a sponsored Instagram post. The second experiment (N = 157) additionally included the presence or absence of an advertising disclosure. Although there were no group differences in conceptual persuasion knowledge, the results indicated that followers, who had established a strong PSR with the SMI, reported lower evaluative persuasion knowledge. Furthermore, followers reported enhanced purchase intentions and brand evaluations, especially when the posts contained advertising disclosures.