Financial digital influencers on social media have become important sources of financial information. However, the mechanisms underlying followers’ trust and follow these recommendations still need to be better understood. This paper aims to measure the factors that explain followers’ intention to follow financial digital influencers’ recommendations.
A survey was conducted among the target audience of followers of financial digital influencers, obtaining 421 valid responses, and structural equation modeling was used.
The results show that all hypotheses were supported, and that parasocial interaction, information quality, and the need for information directly affect followers’ intentions to follow financial digital influencers’ recommendations. The most significant factor in the follower’s behavioral intention is the need for information.
A new hypothetical model was created that integrates followers’ perceptions of parasocial interaction, the quality of information characteristics, the financial attributes of digital influencers, and the need for their followers’ information. Despite its parsimony, the model considers various drivers of digital influencers’ followers’ intentions and is specifically aimed at this underexplored context. This study’s main contributions are identifying factors that explain digital influencers’ followers’ intention to follow their recommendations and showing that information quality is influenced by digital influencer attributes, such as expertise and credibility.
