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：创业影响者对创业者的影响


关于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观点，研究影响者如何利用社交媒体作为创业机会。然而，目前尚不清楚受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。使用两项研究的方法，研究 1 归纳地揭示了企业家将创业影响者的内容解释为准社会指导——一种一对多的、大多数没有回报的导师-门生关系，在这种关系中，媒体用户将自己想象成门徒，并认为媒体人物提供个性化的职业相关和社会心理支持，尽管知道媒体人物不知道关于他们自己或他们的情况的私密细节。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。使用来自 613 名企业家的数据，研究 2 对研究 1 得出的模型进行了演绎，找到了对该模型的一般支持。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，同时也会使他们面临传统指导中不常见的特定危险。