As companies come to appreciate social media’s economic advantages, it has transformed into a dichotomous social-commercial landscape. In this specific situation, followers evaluate social media influencers that play both the friend and marketer roles in the decision-making process. This study creates a dual-role trust model based on the role theory to investigate trust processes across different roles. More importantly, this study goes deeper into examining the potential paradoxical positive and negative moderating roles of perceived friendship in the dual-role trust mechanism. The structural equation model approach is first conducted to test our hypotheses using a survey of 465 TikTok respondents. Next, the study model’s hypotheses are further tested using a post hoc analysis to see if they change based on followers’ regulatory focus. The findings support perceived friendship’s complementary and replacement functions in a dual role-based trust mechanism, as well as the transfer of trust between dual roles. There is a discussion of the implications for theory and practice.

中文翻译：

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社交媒体影响者的双重角色信任模型：感知友谊的悖论


随着公司开始欣赏社交媒体的经济优势，它已经转变为一个二分法的社交商业格局。在这种特定情况下，追随者会评估在决策过程中同时扮演朋友和营销人员角色的社交媒体影响者。本研究基于角色理论创建了一个双重角色信任模型，以研究不同角色之间的信任过程。更重要的是，本研究更深入地研究了感知友谊在双重角色信任机制中潜在的矛盾的积极和消极调节作用。首先进行结构方程模型方法，通过对 465 名 TikTok 受访者的调查来检验我们的假设。接下来，使用事后分析进一步测试研究模型的假设，以查看它们是否根据追随者的监管重点而变化。研究结果支持感知到的友谊在基于双重角色的信任机制中的互补和替代功能，以及双重角色之间的信任转移。讨论了对理论和实践的影响。