The Influence of Virtual Influencer Authenticity on Consumer Purchase Intentions: The Mediating Role of Emotional Trust and the Moderating Role of Environmental Perception (From a Social Identity Theory Perspective)

Abstract

Digital technology iteratively drives virtual netizens to become the core carrier of e-commerce marketing. The visual appearance is directly influenced by the artificial intelligence (AI) generation algorithm or computer graphics (CG) rendering technology. Interactive performance and real perception of virtual netizens, and profoundly change consumers' cognition and consumption decision-making mechanism. From the perspective of social identity theory, this study decomposes the authenticity of virtual online celebrities into two technical dimensions: CG visual authenticity and AI interactive authenticity. Taking the current well-known virtual online celebrities as the research object, with the help of Likert 5-point scale, using the forms of descriptive statistics, regression analysis, mediation effect test, moderation effect test and robustness test, this study studies the impact of virtual online celebrities' authenticity This study examines the influence of the authenticity of virtual online celebrities on consumers' purchase intentions, considering the mediating role of emotional trust and the moderating role of environmental perception. The findings demonstrate that both the computer-generated (CG) visual authenticity and artificial intelligence (AI) interactive authenticity of virtual online celebrities exert a significant positive effect on consumers' purchase intentions. Additionally, the perceived authenticity of virtual netizens also positively influences consumers' purchase intentions. Emotional trust is found to significantly mediate the relationship between the authenticity of virtual online celebrities and consumers' purchase intentions. Furthermore, environmental perception significantly and positively moderates the relationship between the authenticity of virtual online celebrities and emotional trust. and between the authenticity of virtual online celebrities and consumers' purchase intention. In order to further strengthen and promote the authenticity of virtual online celebrities to consumers' purchase intention, this paper expands the research boundary of virtual online celebrities' marketing from the perspective of technology bottom, and provides algorithm support and practical basis for AI and CG technology to enable the commercial operation of virtual online celebrities and accurately activate consumers' purchase intention.