Virtual influencer and cultural heritage destination: Endorsement effectiveness of virtual versus human influencers

Ke Zhang, Xinru Sun and Gang Li

Annals of Tourism Research, 2025, vol. 110, issue C

Abstract: The present research conducted four experiments and found that virtual influencers are less effective than human influencers in endorsing cultural heritage destinations. Drawing on social categorization theory, we suggest that this effect occurs because tourists perceive virtual (vs. human) influencers as outsiders of humankind with a limited understanding of human culture. Consistent with this mechanism, our findings further reveal that this low effectiveness would be mitigated when virtual influencers showcase the ability to comprehend human culture. This research makes theoretical contributions to the literature on social perceptions of virtual influencers and social media marketing in the tourism industry. Also, these findings provide managerial implications regarding the effective usage of virtual influencers in destination marketing.

Keywords: Virtual influencers; Social media marketing; Cultural heritage destination; Social categorization theory; Experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160738324001506
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:anture:v:110:y:2025:i:c:s0160738324001506

DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2024.103873

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Tourism Research is currently edited by John Tribe

More articles in Annals of Tourism Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().