They Made It Just for Me! How AI Transparency and Influencer Well‐Being Shape Consumer Responses to AI‐Driven Content

ABSTRACT This study investigates how AI‐driven content personalization in influencer marketing shapes consumer purchase intentions, focusing on perceived authenticity as a mediator and AI transparency and influencer well‐being as moderators. Grounded in the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), we argue that personalization enhances behavioral intentions primarily when followers perceive the endorsement as genuine, and this judgment is conditioned by disclosure about the algorithm's involvement and the influencer's apparent emotional state. Using a two‐study design, we test a moderated‐mediation model. Study 1, a 2 × 2 experiment ( n = 280), varied AI transparency and influencer well‐being and shows that perceived authenticity carries the effect of personalization to intentions. Study 2, a recall‐based survey ( n = 370), corroborates these relationships in naturalistic settings while accounting for respondents' familiarity with AI. Results from both studies confirm that perceived authenticity significantly mediates the relationship between personalization and purchase intentions. The indirect effect is strengthened when AI transparency is high and when influencer well‐being is low, suggesting that consumers interpret transparency and emotional cues as signals of sincerity. These findings extend TRA to digital content environments by demonstrating that personalization alone is insufficient to generate persuasive outcomes without the support of credibility‐enhancing cues.