Social Media Celebrities and Para-social Relationships: The Chinese Context

Meng Tao (), Hamza Kaka Abdul Wahab and Jashim Khan
Additional contact information
Meng Tao: International Business School, DUFE
Hamza Kaka Abdul Wahab: School of Business Administration, DUFE
Jashim Khan: University of Surrey

A chapter in Strategic Innovative Marketing and Tourism, 2019, pp 827-833 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine the role of social media celebrity plays in developing para-social relationship with their audience. The research examines this relationship by investigating (a) the mediating role of numbers of hours enthusiast spent interacting with celebrities and (b) the moderating role of celebrity identification in the relationship between social media celebrity effect and para-social relationship. An online survey gathered 527 response from female students between the ages of 18–30 years who follow social media celebrities. Result shows that hours spent online with social media celebrities mediate the relationship between the effect of social media celebrities and para-social relationships. Moderated mediation reveals that the indirect path (hours spent with social media celebrity online) through which social media celebrities exert their effect on para-social relationships is dependent on the enthusiast identification with social media celebrities. This paper makes available important findings for marketers, governments and academics. Businesses may make use of the role play by social media celebrities in influencing women and as a result use them to promote their products. Governments can also use the celebrities to pass on information to their followers on matters regarding social vices. The role of time spent online with social media celebrity and identification on para-social relationships are discussed together with future research directions.

Keywords: Social media celebrities; Para-social relationship; Identification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:prbchp:978-3-030-12453-3_95

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030124533

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-12453-3_95

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().