Research on social media influencers and entrepreneurship tends to adopt an influencer-as-entrepreneur perspective by examining how influencers leverage social media as entrepreneurial opportunities. However, it remains unclear how entrepreneurs in the audience interpret and leverage influencer content in their entrepreneurial endeavors. Using a two-study approach, Study 1 inductively uncovers that entrepreneurs interpret entrepreneurship influencers' content as para-social mentoring—a one-to-many, mostly unreciprocated mentor-protégé relationship in which media users envision themselves as protégés and perceive media figures as providing individualized career-related and psychosocial support despite knowing that the media figures do not know intimate details about themselves or their circumstances. Our model posits that para-social mentoring between entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship influencers relates to critical entrepreneurship-related outcomes. Using data from 613 entrepreneurs, Study 2 deductively finds general support for the model derived from Study 1. Our study highlights how para-social mentoring operates like a double-edged sword that can benefit entrepreneurs while also exposing them to specific hazards not common in traditional mentoring.

中文翻译：

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准社会指导：创业影响者对企业家的影响


对社交媒体影响者和创业的研究倾向于采用影响者作为企业家的视角，研究影响者如何利用社交媒体作为创业机会。然而，目前尚不清楚观众中的企业家如何在他们的创业努力中解释和利用影响者内容。使用两项研究方法，研究 1 归纳发现，企业家将创业影响者的内容解释为类社会指导——一种一对多、大多是无回报的导师与门徒关系，在这种关系中，媒体用户将自己想象为门徒，并将媒体人物视为尽管知道媒体人物并不了解有关他们自己或他们的情况的私密细节，但仍提供个性化的职业相关和社会心理支持。我们的模型假设企业家和创业影响者之间的准社会指导与关键的创业相关结果有关。利用 613 名企业家的数据，研究 2 演绎地找到了对研究 1 得出的模型的普遍支持。我们的研究强调了准社会指导如何像一把双刃剑一样运作，它可以使企业家受益，同时也使他们面临传统中不常见的特定危险。指导。