Investigating the Effect of Self-Congruity on Attitudes toward Virtual Influencers: Mediating the Effect of Emotional Attachment

AbstractWith the expansion of virtual spaces, the role of virtual influencers has become more important. Although virtual influencers are imaginary characters, people can become interested in their attractive appearances and human characteristics and values on social media. However, most existing studies on virtual influencers deal with external factors, such as their appearance. This study aimed to investigate whether virtual influencers and users' self-congruity including their actual and ideal selves on emotional attachment and to verify the effects of emotional attachment to virtual influencers on attitudes towards virtual influencers. A survey was conducted of 344 users, and empirical results from structural equation modeling indicated that significant impacts of actual self-congruity between virtual influencers and users were found on emotional attachment when virtual influencers were divided into external and internal images. Additionally, the congruity between internal images of the virtual influencers and the user's ideal self-congruity significantly affected emotional attachment. The study results demonstrated that self-congruity theory provides an accurate framework for describing the role of emotional attachment to virtual influencers.Keywords: Virtual influencerself-congruityemotional attachmentstructural equation model Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsYunseon NaYunseon Na received a B.S. degree in computer science & information engineering from National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan and a M.S at the Department of Human-Artificial Intelligence Interaction, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea. Her research interests include user behavior in social media and virtual influencer.Youngsang KimYoungsang Kim is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Human-Artificial Intelligence Interaction, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea. His research interests are corpus linguistics, human-computer interaction, and pragmatics.Daeho LeeDaeho Lee is now an associate professor at the Department of Interaction Science, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea. His research interests include the adoption of new ICT products & services, government policies in the area of ICT, and consumer behavior in online.