Seeing less, sharing more: how face disclosure and selective blur impact engagement with cause-related marketing on Instagram

Purpose This study examines how visual cues in cause-related marketing (CM) content on social media – such as face disclosure and selective focus – affect users’ engagement, including sharing intentions and participation, via perceived privacy concerns. Design/methodology/approach Across three experimental studies (N = 405), Study 1 explored the influence of face disclosure on psychological discomfort and privacy concerns. Study 2 confirmed the initial findings while examining disclosure effects on sharing intentions, with privacy concerns as a mediator and photo-sharing tendencies as a moderator. Study 3 employed a 2 × 2 factorial design to further validate prior results, demonstrating that selective focus (via blurring) can mitigate privacy concerns from face disclosure. Findings The moderated mediation analysis showed that increasing the visual salience of the beneficiary through face disclosure in CM content can trigger privacy concerns via heightened psychological discomfort, negatively affecting users’ intentions to share posts on Instagram. Conversely, reducing visual prominence using selective focus techniques like blurring mitigates these effects, while photo-sharing tendencies moderate the effects of privacy concerns on both sharing and participation intentions. Research limitations/implications In recent years, brands have turned to social media to launch CM campaigns, leveraging its interactive and content-sharing capabilities. However, how visual factors in CM content influence sharing and participation intentions – especially through elements that may deter these actions – remains underexplored. This study seeks to bridge this gap with empirical insights. Originality/value This study offers an alternative to the common use of emotionally salient imagery in CM by showing that reducing facial salience – particularly in depictions of a vulnerable child – can promote user engagement on Instagram by alleviating privacy concerns.