Developing the Surrogate Trust Paradox: Dynamic Credibility Formation in Nigerian Influencer-Mediated E-Commerce

This conceptual paper develops the Surrogate Trust Paradox to explain the potential tension in influencer marketing. It posits that influencers may generate commercial value through audiences’ perceived credibility. However, when commercialization intensifies, it may undermine the very credibility on which their influence depends. The Surrogate Trust Paradox represents a theoretical extension of existing studies on influencer credibility, positioning credibility as both a source characteristic and a potential surrogate trust cue in digital commerce environments with weak and vulnerable institutional assurance, especially in a country like Nigeria. The framework is grounded in Source Credibility Theory, the Elaboration Likelihood Model, the Theory of Reasoned Action, and Parasocial Interaction Theory. It develops 11 propositions linking influencer characteristics, commercialization, credibility, consumer skepticism, institutional trust, surrogate trust, and purchasing intention. In addition, the framework proposes that commercialization intensity may have an inverted U-shaped relationship with credibility, whereby credibility may initially coexist with moderate levels of commercialization (selective commercialization) but may decline after a certain level of commercialization has been reached (context-dependent threshold). Furthermore, the framework introduces Dynamic Credibility Formation as a temporal extension of the Surrogate Trust Paradox and proposes that credibility may depend on prior commercialization trajectories and therefore exhibit trajectory dependence, asymmetric credibility erosion, and incomplete credibility recovery. Since no empirical testing was conducted within this conceptual study, the Surrogate Trust Paradox framework is intended to provide a foundation for future empirical testing using non-linear methods, longitudinal designs, and experimental approaches.