The path to people’s responses to native advertising in social media: A perspective of self-presentational desire

Recently, anecdotal evidence has suggested that native advertising in social media can be considered another important arena for people to build desired self-presentational images and online identities. Thus, it calls for an empirical analysis on people’s responses to native advertising from a perspective of self-presentational desire (SPD). This study proposes a conceptual model to examine the role of SPD on people’s responses to native advertising, i.e., advertising acceptance (AC) and advertising engagement (AE), in social media. The model was validated using survey data collected from a large social community. The results indicate that SPD is a crucial determinant of native advertising responses. Moreover, AC partially mediates the relationship between SPD and AE. This work contributes to our understanding of advertising responses by extending the theory of self-presentation to the context of native advertising and generates several critical managerial insights for social media providers and advertisers.