From Social Media Engagement to Brand Attitude: A Social Identity Perspective on Cancel Culture Participation

Abstract

The growing role of social media in shaping public conversations has transformed the way consumers evaluate brands and respond to perceived corporate misconduct. This study examines the relationship between social media engagement and brand attitude by investigating the mediating roles of attitude toward cancel culture and cancel culture participation, together with the moderating roles of self-identity and influencer credibility. The proposed framework links social media engagement with attitudes toward cancel culture, participation in cancellation-related activities, and subsequent brand evaluations. The empirical analysis incorporates descriptive statistics, measurement assessment, structural equation modeling, mediation analysis, moderation analysis, and model-fit evaluation. The measurement results demonstrate satisfactory reliability, convergent validity, and acceptable levels of multicollinearity across the study constructs. The structural findings indicate that social media engagement is positively associated with attitudes toward cancel culture and brand attitude, while attitudes toward cancel culture are positively related to cancel culture participation. Cancel culture participation, in turn, is negatively associated with brand attitude. The mediation analysis indicates that attitude toward cancel culture provides a significant pathway linking social media engagement with cancel culture participation, while cancel culture participation mediates the relationship between attitude toward cancel culture and brand attitude. The moderation results further demonstrate that self-identity strengthens the relationship between social media engagement and attitudes toward cancel culture, whereas influencer credibility significantly conditions the relationship between cancel culture participation and brand attitude. The model demonstrates satisfactory fit to the observed relationships. The study contributes to digital consumer behavior research by integrating social media engagement, social identity, cancel culture, influencer credibility, and brand evaluation within a unified framework and provides a more nuanced explanation of the mechanisms through which digitally mediated collective behavior can influence consumer–brand relationships.