Are top influencers always good? Study on how travel influencers’ follower size affects consumers’ engagement intention

ABSTRACT

This study, based on social impact and regulatory mode theories, investigates the mechanisms of engagement intention through scenario experiments. The results indicate that: (1) there exists an inverted U-shaped relationship between travel influencers’ follower size and consumers’ predictive expectations, as well as engagement intention; (2) predictive expectations serve as an instantaneous mediator; (3) compared to the locomotion-mode consumers, assessment-mode consumers enhance the inverted U-shaped relationship as described above. This study offers a novel theoretical perspective on marketing undertaken by travel influencers and provides specific recommendations which tourism companies can use in relation to influencer marketing.

KEYWORDS:

• Influencer marketing
• travel influencers
• top influencers
• macro-influencers
• follower size
• predictive expectations
• tourism products
• engagement intention
• social impact theory
• regulatory mode theory

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10548408.2024.2369758.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the RuiGuo [China Hainan Graduate Innovation Foundation [Qhys2023-203]]; Mengmeng Song [Hainan Provincial Natural Science Foundation Project of China [620RC561, 623RC443]]; Mengmeng Song [Hainan Province Key R&D Program [ZDYF2022GXJS007, ZDYF2022GXJS010]]; Mengmeng Song [National Natural Science Foundation of China [72062015]].