Understanding followers’ stickiness to digital influencers: The effect of psychological responses

•This research extends the scope of theoretical applications of stickiness concept to the context of digital influencer.•This research unveils the underlying theoretical formation mechanism of followers’ stickiness towards digital influencers.•This paper defines and examines the moderating effects of the revenue-model genres used by digital influencers.•This study provides a theoretical distinction between digital influencers and traditional celebrities. The ability of digital influencers to convert their followers into paying customers relies heavily on the followers’ “stickiness”, a topic that has not been adequately investigated in the existing literature. From a psychological perspective, this study develops a theoretical model of followers’ stickiness. Two forms of followers’ psychological responses to digital influencers are jointly considered: wishful identification and parasocial relationships. This study also categorizes and examines the moderating effects exerted by the genres of digital influencers’ revenue models, which represent a vital contextual factor for forming followers’ stickiness. A survey was conducted on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter, with a sample of 319 followers of real digital influencers that are using different genres of revenue models. The findings indicate that both wishful identification and parasocial relationships have significant but different impacts on followers’ stickiness in different genres of influencers’ revenue models. This paper enriches our understanding of the phenomenon of followers’ stickiness toward digital influencers and provides practical guidance for digital influencers and social commerce/media platform providers.