The Mechanism and Empirical Study of Social Media Narrative-Driven Youth Consumption

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-604-3_36How to use a DOI?

Keywords

social media narrative; youth consumer behavior; narrative immersion; value identification; empirical study

Abstract

This paper aims to reveal the internal mechanisms through which social media narratives drive youth consumption. Grounded in narrative communication theory, narrative transportation theory, the theory of planned behavior, and social influence theory, we construct an integrated model of “social media narrative — psychological mechanisms — consumer behavior.” Using a questionnaire survey, we collected 350 valid responses from young participants aged 20–30 and conducted empirical testing via structural equation modeling (SEM). The results indicate that social media narrative strategies exert significant positive effects on youth users’ narrative immersion and value identification; narrative immersion and value identification serve as dual mediators between narrative strategies and purchase intention; purchase intention significantly promotes actual purchasing behavior; social media usage frequency positively moderates the narrative immersion → purchase intention path, while trust in Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) positively moderates the value identification → purchase intention path. This study deepens theoretical links between social media narratives and youth consumption and provides practical implications for corporate narrative marketing and platform governance.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Kaiyuan Li
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/02/26
TI  - The Mechanism and Empirical Study of Social Media Narrative-Driven Youth Consumption
BT  - Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Economic Development and Business Culture (ICEDBC 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 339
EP  - 351
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-604-3_36
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-604-3_36
ID  - Li2026
ER  -