Political parasocial relationships on social media: The role of user experiences and emotions in shaping eWOM and voting intention

Social media has become a primary space for political actors to build connections with citizens which forms political parasocial relationships that influence their political actions. This study explores how users' experiences with political figure social media accounts, specifically through informational, homophily, and relationship experiences, evoke emotions that influence electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and voting intention in the Indonesian 2024 presidential election. We utilize the PAD framework (Pleasure, Arousal, Dominance) to describe the emotional dimensions. This research was conducted by distributing surveys and successfully obtained 565 valid responses, which were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Our findings reveal that both homophily and relationship experiences significantly affect all three emotional dimensions, with pleasure emerges as the strongest mediator linking social media experiences to both eWOM and voting intentions. Arousal and dominance, however, only influence voting intention. These findings highlight the central role of emotions in mobilizing online and offline political participation and underscore how emotions bridge followers’ experiences on social media and political behaviors. The study contributes to political communication theory by offering practical guidance for political actors to develop platform-specific strategies that target distinct emotional pathways for different behavioral outcomes