The Antecedents of Advertisement Scepticism and Its Effects on the User Experience of Social Influence Features in the Context of Online Shopping

Modern online advertising often employs differ- ent kinds of social influence features, which are likely to be experienced differently by different users, such as individuals with different levels of advertisement (ad) scepticism. In this study, we focus on these dif- ferences by examining (1) how different kinds of per- sonality and demographic traits affect ad scepticism, and (2) how ad scepticism, in turn, affects the user ex- perience of four different kinds of social influence fea- tures. By using data from 628 online shoppers, we find ad scepticism to be affected by four out of the big five personality traits as well as age and education. We also find ad scepticism to negatively affect user experi- ence, with a stronger effect in the case of social pres- sure than social proof features. These novel findings promote our understanding of the antecedents of ad scepticism and of the potential risks of employing so- cial influence features in online advertising.