A co-creation involving peripheral cues: When and how engagement size generates persuasiveness

Abstract

How online engagement is driven has received increasing scholarly attention, but the persuasive role of engagement size as a peripheral cue on the posting page and its underlying mechanisms remain unclear, particularly in tourism. To address this gap, we crafted a conceptual model to examine whether, when, and how engagement size generates persuasiveness on social media through five experiments. Our research reveals that macro (vs. micro) engagement size triggers positive persuasiveness by increasing perceived expertise and perceived popularity. More importantly, the cueing power of engagement size is strengthened when the event occurs in the near future and the post has a high content richness. This novel finding implies that “engagement size as a social asset” (ESASS) is an appendant property of social media content. The cueing power of engagement size is a form of “persuasion co-creation” resulting from content creators and engaged viewers. Our study contributes to firstly conceptualizing the “engagement size” and advancing the “dual-process theory of persuasion” in the social media context. Marketers, influencers, consumers, and platforms can use these findings and suggestions to guide their practice.