Do You Care to Share? The Negative Effect of Sponsored Content on the Behavioral Engagement with a Social Media Post Containing a COVID-19 Message

Abstract

During the pandemic, social media influencers were facing the challenge of balancing financial interests while publishing relevant content about the virus. This article explores how consumers would react if sponsored content was included in a social media post about COVID-19. We hypothesized that including sponsored content in the COVID-19 post would negatively affect the influencer’s perceived credibility, resulting in more negative attitudes towards the post and lower behavioral engagement. A 2 (control vs. COVID-19 message) × 2 (control vs. sponsored content) online experimental study was conducted among 18–34-year-old respondents (N = 169, M_age = 24.3, SD_age = 4.66, 82.1% female). Data were analyzed using a general linear model and a moderated serial mediation model. Results indicated that including sponsored content in the COVID-19 post led to lower perceived influencer credibility, which indirectly negatively influenced behavioral engagement through attitudes towards the post. Our results provide empirical evidence that including sponsored content in a COVID-19 post might reduce the dissemination potential of the post.

Keywords:

• Behavioral engagement
• COVID-19
• influencer
• social media
• sponsored content

Disclosure Statement

The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest.

Ethics Statement

Ethical approval was obtained from the research ethics committee at the Faculty of Education and Psychology of Eotvos Lorand University (No 2020/414-4). Written informed consent was obtained from all respondents.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 Downloaded from: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-FP32sD89H.

2 Downloaded from: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-icMojhbwM.

3 Downloaded from: https://www.instagram.com/p/B9_mNUkJccs/?utm_medium=copy_lin.

4 Downloaded from: https://www.instagram.com/p/B9HK5oYJ8l6/?utm_medium=copy_lin.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by ELTE Thematic Excellence Programme 2020, Supported by National Research, Development and Innovation Office, TKP2020-IKA-05.

Notes on contributors

Ágnes Buvár

Ágnes Buvár (Ph.D., Corvinus University Budapest) is an assistant professor, Institute of People-Environment Transaction, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University.

Eszter Balogh

Eszter Balogh (M.A., ELTE Eötvös Loránd University) is an educational psychologist at Déryné non-profit company, Budapest, Hungary.

Attila Marcelián Dobai

Attila Marcelián Dobai (Ph.D., ELTE Eötvös Loránd University) is an assistant professor, Institute of People-Environment Transaction, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University.

Judit Tessényi

Judit Tessényi (Ph.D., University of Szeged) is the director of the Student Counselling Centre of the University of Szeged.