This research tested the “bad influencer” effect, whereby consumers are less willing to connect with people on social media who post about their indulgence (vs. self-control) with respect to the goals valued by those consumers. We present six studies that test the bad-influencer effect across multiple domains involving indulgence (vs. self-control): eating indulgent (vs. healthy) foods, spending time mindlessly (vs. mindfully), and using profane (vs. proper) language. Our findings show consumers are less willing to connect with people whose social media posts appear indulgent (vs. self-controlled) because they believe such posters will more negatively influence their own valued goals (i.e., interpersonal instrumentality expectations). We further identify two theoretically derived moderators of the bad-influencer effect: goal commitment amplifies the effect, whereas goal suppression attenuates the effect. Finally, we show that willingness to connect (WTC) has downstream consequences for consumers’ receptivity to word-of-mouth (WOM) recommendations made by posters. Our research suggests that content creators and marketing managers seeking to maximize connections should avoid sharing content that appears indulgent with respect to their target audience’s goals.

这项研究测试了“不良影响者”效应，即消费者不太愿意与社交媒体上发布关于他们所重视的目标的放纵（与自我控制）的人联系。我们提出了六项研究，测试了涉及放纵（与自我控制）的多个领域的不良影响者效应：吃放纵的（与健康的）食物，不经意地花时间（与用心），以及使用亵渎的东西（与适当的）语言。我们的研究结果表明，消费者不太愿意与社交媒体帖子显得放纵（而不是自我控制）的人建立联系，因为他们认为此类海报会对他们自己的价值观目标（即人际工具期望）产生更大的负面影响。我们进一步确定了两个从理论上得出的不良影响者效应的调节因素：目标承诺放大了该效应，而目标抑制则削弱了该效应。最后，我们表明连接意愿 (WTC) 对消费者对发帖者口碑 (WOM) 推荐的接受程度具有下游影响。我们的研究表明，寻求最大限度地扩大联系的内容创作者和营销经理应避免分享与其目标受众目标相悖的内容。