Does culture influence consumers’ uses-and-gratifications-related tendency to trust advertising on one digital marketing platform over another?

Introduction Cultural values shape how consumers evaluate digital advertising, yet limited research has examined whether individual-level cultural orientations influence advertising trust in social media environments. Drawing on intercultural communication theory and uses-andgratifications (U&G) theory, this study investigates whether uncertainty avoidance predicts trust in digital advertising and interpersonal recommendations and whether U&G motivations moderate these relationships. Methods Survey data were collected from 485 undergraduate students at a large public university in the United States. Measures assessed individual-level uncertainty avoidance, U&G motivations, trust in digital advertising, and trust in interpersonal recommendation channels. Hypotheses were tested using ordinary least squares regression and Hayes' PROCESS moderation analysis (Model 1). Results Uncertainty avoidance did not significantly predict trust in digital advertising or interpersonal recommendations. However, U&G motivations significantly moderated the relationship between uncertainty avoidance and digital advertising trust. The moderation model explained 24.9% of the variance in digital advertising trust, and the interaction term accounted for an additional 0.94% of explained variance (ΔR2 = .0094). Conditional-effects analyses indicated that uncertainty avoidance was positively associated with digital advertising trust only among participants reporting high levels of U&G motivations. The interaction effect explained an additional 0.94% of variance beyond the main effects. Discussion The findings suggest that uncertainty avoidance alone may have limited explanatory value for understanding advertising trust among university social media users. However, the relationship between uncertainty avoidance and digital advertising trust appears to vary according to platform-related motivations. Although the moderation effect was modest in magnitude, the results indicate that media-use motivations may represent an important boundary condition under which cultural orientations are associated with trust in digital advertising.