importance of literature review in legal research

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Systematic literature review.

Last update: December 10, 2020

‘Literature review’ can refer to a portion of a research article in which the author(s) describe(s) or summarizes a body of literature which is relevant to their article. ‘Literature review’ can also refer to a methodological approach in which a selection of existing literature is collected and analyzed in order to answer a specific question. One approach to doing this type of literature review is called a ‘systematic literature review’ (SLR).

When conducting an SLR, the researcher creates a set of rules or guidelines prior to beginning the review. These rules determine the characteristics of the literature to be included and the steps to be followed during the research process. Creating these rules helps the researcher by narrowing down the focus of their project and the scope of the literature to be included, and they aid in making the research methodology transparent and replicable.

There are many different ways that an SLR can be used in socio-legal research. For example, an SLR can be used to show the impact of a certain law or policy (Loong e.a. 2019), uncover patterns across literature (e.g. perpetrator characteristics) (Alleyne & Parfitt 2017), outline crime prevention strategies that are currently in place (Gorden & Buchanan 2013), describe to what extent a problem is understood or researched (Krieger 2013), point out the gaps in the current research (Urinboyev e.a. 2016), or identify potential areas for future research. Various types of documents may be included in an SLR such as court transcripts, academic literature, news articles, NGO reports or government documents.

The first step for starting your SLR is creating a research journal in which you will write down your SLR rules and keep track of your daily activities. This will help you keep a timeline of your project, keep track of your decision making process, and maintain the transparency and replicability of your research. The next step is determining your research question. When you have your research question, you can create the inclusion and exclusion criteria or the characteristics that literature must or must not have to be included in your SLR. The key question is “what kind of information is needed to answer the research question?” It is necessary to explain why the criteria were selected. After this, you can begin searching for and collecting literature which meets your inclusion criteria. Different databases and sources of literature (e.g. academic journals or newspapers) will yield different search results, so it may be helpful to do trial searches to see which sources provide the most relevant literature for your project. Once you have collected all of your literature, you can begin reading and analyzing the literature.

There are various research tools that can aid you in conducting your SLR such as qualitative data analysis software (e.g. ATLAS.ti) or reference manager software (e.g. Mendeley). Determine which programs to use based on your personal preference and your research project.

Fink, A. (2014). Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.

Hagen-Zanker, J. & Mallet, R. (2013). How to do a Rigorous, Evidence Focused Literature Review in International Development: A Guidance Note. Working paper Overseas Direct Investment.

Oliver, S., & Sutcliffe, K. (2012). Describing and analysing studies. Gough, D. A. & Oliver, S. In An Introduction to Systematic Reviews. London, UK. SAGE.

Pittaway, L. (2008). Systematic Literature Reviews. Thorpe, R. & Holt, R. In T he Sage Dictionary of Qualitative Management Research . London, UK. SAGE.

Siddaway, A. (2014). What Is a Systematic Literature Review and How Do I Do One?

Snel, M. & de Moraes, J. (2018). Doing a Systematic Literature Review in Legal Scholarship. The Hague, NL. Eleven International Publishing.

Interactive Learning Module 1: Introduction to Conducting Systematic Reviews

Alleyne, E. & Parfitt, C. (2017). Adult-Perpetrated Animal Abuse: A Systematic Literature Review. Trauma, Violence & Abuse. Vol. 20. No. 3. Pp. 344-357.

Example of a systematic literature review.

Brown, R. T. (2010). Systematic Review of the Impact of Adult Drug-Treatment Courts. Translational Research . Vol. 155. No 6. Pp. 263-274.

Gorden, C., & Buchanan, J. (2013). A Systematic Literature Review of Doorstep Crime: Are the Crime-Prevention Strategies More Harmful than the Crime? The Howard Journal . Vol. 52. No. 5. Pp. 498-515.

Krieger, M. A. (2016). Unpacking “Sexting”: A Systematic Review of Nonconensual Sexting in Legal, Educational, and Psychological Literatures. Trauma, Violence & Abuse . Vol. 18. No. 5. Pp. 593-601.

Loong, D., Bonato, S., Barnsley, J., & Dewa, C. S. (2019). The Effectiveness of Mental Health Courts in Reducing Recidivism and Police Contact: A Systematic Review. Community Mental Health Journal. Vol. 55. No. 7 Pp. 1073-1098.

Urinboyev, R., Wickenberg, P., & Leo, U. (2016). Child Rights, Classroom, and Social Management: A Systematic Literature Review. The International Journal of Children’s Rights. Vol. 24. No. 3. Pp. 522-547.

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Law: Introduction to Research

• Finding a Research Topic
• Getting Started
• Generate Research Ideas
• Brainstorming
• Scanning Material
• Suitability Analysis
• The difference between a topic and a research question

Literature Review

• Referencing

When thinking about any risks associated with your research you may realise that it is difficult to predict your research needs and the accompanying risks as you were not sure what information would be required; this is why a literature review is necessary. A thorough literature review will help identify gaps in existing knowledge where research is needed; filling those gaps is one of the prime functions of research. The literature review will indicate what is known about your chosen area of research and show where further contributions from further research can be made.

Undertaking a literature review is probably one of the most difficult stages of the research process but it can be both exciting and fulfilling. This section aims to put the literature review into context and to explain what it does and how to do it.

The literature on a particular legal topic is of fundamental importance to the international community of researchers and scholars working within particular academic disciplines. Academic publishing supports research by enabling researchers to tell the world what they have discovered and allows others researching in the same area to peer review their work; in this way, a combined body of knowledge is established.

During your research, you will use the literature to:

• develop your knowledge of your chosen topic and the research process in general terms
• ensure that you have an understanding of the current state of academic knowledge within your chosen topic
• identify the gaps in knowledge that your research will address
• ensure that your research question will not become too broad or narrow.

The Purpose of Literature Review

Understanding existing research is at the core of your study. A good literature review is important because it enables you to understand the existing work in your chosen topic as well as explaining concepts, approaches and ideas relevant to that topic.

The literature review is also essential as it will enable you to identify an appropriate research method. Your research method, and needs, can only be established in the light of a review of existing knowledge.

Your literature review is regarded as secondary research. The research process is an ongoing one, so your literature review is never really finished or entirely up to date as reading and understanding the existing literature is a constant part of being a researcher; professionally it is an obligation.

Different Types of Research

• Different types of research
• Different sources
• Understand research in your chosen area
• Explaining relevant concepts and ideas
• Contextualizing your results
• What to read?
• Peer review
• Searching the literature
• Critically evaluating documents

Your research will draw upon both primary and secondary research. The difference between primary and secondary research is that primary research is new research on a topic that adds to the existing body of knowledge. Secondary research is research into what others have written or said on the topic.

You will also draw upon primary and secondary sources to undertake your research. Primary sources are evidence recorded at the time, such as a photograph, an artifact, a diary, or the text of a statute or court ruling. Primary legal sources are the products of those bodies with the authority to make, interpret and apply the law. Secondary sources are what others have written or said about the primary source, their interpretation, support, or critique of the primary source. Similarly, secondary legal sources are what academics, lawyers, politicians, journalists, and others have said or written about a primary legal source.

Part of the aim of your studies is to make a contribution to the existing body of academic knowledge. Without a literature review there would be a risk that what you are producing is not actually newly researched knowledge; instead it may only be a replication of what is already known. The only way to ensure that your research is new is to find out what others have already done. However, this is not to say that you should never attempt to research some things that have been done before if you feel that you can provide valuable new insights.

You also need to use the literature review to build a body of useful ideas to help you conceptualise your research question and understand the current thinking on the topic. By studying the literature you will become familiar with research methods appropriate to your chosen topic and this will show you how to apply them. Careful consideration should be given to the research methods deployed by existing researchers in the topic, but this should not stifle innovative approaches. Your literature study should also demonstrate the context of your own work, and how it relates, and builds, on the work of others; ‘to make proper acknowledgment of the work of previous authors and to delineate [your] own contributions to the field’ (Sharp et al., 2002, p. 28).

When you have completed your primary research, you will still have the task of demonstrating how your research contributes to the topic in which you have been working. Comparing your results to similar work within the topic will demonstrate how you have moved the discipline forward.

Comparing your results with the gaps that you identified in the early stages of your literature review will allow you to evaluate how well you have addressed them.

A successful literature review will have references from a number of different types of sources; it is not simply a book review. What is much more important than the number of references is that you have a selection of literature that is appropriate for your research; what is appropriate will depend on the type of research you are undertaking. For example, if your topic is in an area of recent legal debate, you will probably find most of the relevant material in journal articles or conference papers. If you are studying policy issues in law-making, you would expect to cite more government reports. In either case, you will need some core references that are recent and relevant. A research project could also contain a number of older citations to provide a historical context or describe established methods. Perhaps a recent newspaper, journal or magazine article could illustrate the contemporary relevance or importance of your research.

You will have to use your own judgment (and the advice of your tutor) to ascertain what the suitable range of literature and references is for your review. This will differ for each topic of research, but you will be able to get a feel for what is appropriate by looking at relevant publications; most publications fall into the following broad categories:

Online legal databases

Online legal research services such as Westlaw , LexisNexis , JSTOR , EBSCOhost , or HeinOnline are a good source of journal articles and as a repository of legislation, case law, law reports, newspaper and magazine articles, public records, and treatises.

Journal articles

These provide more recent discussions than textbooks. Peer-reviewed journals are the gold standard for academic quality. Having at least some journal articles in your literature review is almost always required. Note that the lead time on journal articles is often up to two years, so they may not be sufficiently up to date for fast-moving areas. Look for special issues of journals, as these usually focus on a particular topic and you may find that they are more relevant to your area of research.

Many law schools host journals that contain articles by academics and students; these may also be of interest. Other sources could include online newspapers such as  The Conversation  which are sourced from academia and designed to highlight current academic research or respond to current events.

Conference literature

Academic conferences are meetings in which groups of academics working in a particular area meet to discuss their work. Delegates usually write one or more papers that are then collected into a volume or special edition of a journal. Conference proceedings can be quite good in providing a snapshot of a topic, as they tend to be quite focused. Looking at the authors of the papers can also give you an idea of who the key names in that area are. The quality varies widely, both in terms of the material published and how it is presented. Most conferences include some professional researchers, some of whom can be contacted, and lots of students. Conference papers are often refereed but usually not to the same level as journal articles.

Having conference papers in your literature review does lend academic credibility, especially in rapidly developing areas, and conference papers generally contain the preliminary work that eventually forms journal articles.

Textbooks are good for identifying established, well-understood concepts and techniques, but are unlikely to have enough up-to-date research to be the main source of literature. Most disciplines, however, have a collection of canonical reference works that you should use to ensure you are implementing standard terms or techniques correctly. Textbooks can also be useful as a starting point for your literature search as you can investigate journal articles or conference papers that have been cited. Footnotes are a rich source of preliminary leads.

Law magazines

These can be useful, particularly for projects related to the role of lawyers. Be aware of the possibility of law firm bias (for example in labour law towards employers, employee rights, or trade unions) or articles that are little more than advertisements. Examples of professional journals include the  SA ePublications (Sabinet), De Rebus - SA Attorneys' Journal ,  etc . Most jurisdictions have some form of a professional journal.

Government and other official reports

There is a wide range of publications, including ‘white papers', official reports, census, and other government-produced statistical data that are potentially useful to the researcher. Be aware of the possibility of political or economic bias or the reflection of a situation that has since changed.

Internal company or organisation reports/Institutional repository

These may be useful in a few situations but should be used sparingly, particularly if they are not readily available to the wider community of researchers. They will also not have been through a process of academic review. Such unpublished or semi-published reports are collectively called ‘grey literature.

Manuals and handbooks

These are of limited relevance, but may be useful to establish current techniques, approaches, and procedures.

Specialist supplements from quality newspapers can provide useful up-to-date information, as can the online versions of the same papers. Some newspapers provide a searchable archive that can provide a more general interest context for your work.

The worldwide web

This is widely used by lawyers today. According to the 2011 American Bar Association Report, 84.4% of attorneys turn to online sources as their first step in legal research (Lenhart, 2012, p. 27). It is an extremely useful source of references, particularly whilst carrying out an initial investigation. Although sites such as Wikipedia can be very helpful for providing a quick overview of particular topics and highlighting other areas of research that may be connected to your own, they should  not  usually be included in your review as they are of variable quality and are open to very rapid change. Treat the information you find on the internet with appropriate care. Be very careful about the source of information and look carefully at who operates the website.

Personal communications

Personal communications such as (unpublished) letters and conversations are not references. If you use such comments (and of course, you should respect the confidence of anyone you have discussed your work with), you should draw attention to the fact that you are quoting someone and mark it as ‘personal communication’ in the body of the text. Responses you might obtain from, for example, interviews and questionnaires as part of your research should be reported as data obtained through primary research.

It is crucial that most of your literature should come from peer-reviewed materials, such as journal articles. The point of peer reviewing is to increase quality by ensuring that the ideas presented seem well-founded to other experts in the topic. Conference papers are generally peer-reviewed, although the review process is usually less stringent, and so the standing of conference papers is not the same as for journals. Books, magazines, newspapers, and websites (including blogs, wikis, corporate sites, etc.) are not subject to peer review, and you should treat them with appropriate caution. Also, treat each publication on its merits; it is more helpful to use a good conference paper than a poor journal paper. Similarly, it is acceptable to refer to a well-written blog by a knowledgeable and well-known author provided that you supply appropriate context. In all these cases, the important thing is that you interpret the work correctly.

You will have undertaken legal research and developed your research skills as you prepared for earlier assignments. A literature review builds on this. You may, however, be wondering where to start. One technique is to use an iteration of five stages to help you with your early research.

The five stages are: planning, searching, gathering, analysing and comparing.

Following these stages will provide you with a systematic approach to gathering and analysing literature in your chosen topic of study; this will ensure that you take a critical approach to the literature.

To undertake an effective review of the literature on your chosen topic you will need to plan your review carefully. This includes setting aside enough time in which to undertake your review. In planning there are several aspects you need to think about:

• What sources of information are most relevant to your chosen research question?
• What gaps in knowledge have you identified in your chosen topic and used as a basis for your research question?
• What search terms will you use and how will you refine these?
• How will you record your sources?
• How will you interrogate those sources?
• How will you continue to review the literature as you progress with your research in order to keep as up-to-date as possible?
• Are you able to easily access all the sources you need?
• What arrangements may you need to make to access any hard copy materials?
• Will you join one of the legal alert services to keep you abreast of changes in your chosen topic (such as new court judgments)?
• What notes of progress will you record in your research diary?

Spending time thinking about all aspects of the literature review, planning your time, and setting yourself targets will help to keep your research on track and will enable you to record your progress and any adjustments you make, along with the reasons for those adjustments.

This section is designed to provide you with some reminders in relation to searching, choosing search terms and some ideas about where to start in undertaking a literature review.

Where to start

The best places to start are likely to be a legal database (or law library) and Google Scholar. Many students and academics now use Google Scholar as one of their ‘go to’ tools for scholarly research. It can be helpful to gain an overview of a topic or to gain a sense of direction, but it is not a substitute for your own research of primary and secondary sources.

Having gained an overview from your initial search through browsing general collections of documents, you will then need to undertake a more detailed search to find specific documents. Identifying relevant scholarly articles and following links in footnotes and bibliographies can be helpful as you continue your search for relevant information.

One of the decisions you will have to make is when to stop working on your literature review and your research, and when to start writing up your dissertation. This will be determined by the material you gather and the time constraints you are working on.

Selecting resources

One starting point may be to locate a small number of key journal papers or articles; for a draft outline proposal for your research, you might have around four to six of these, accumulating more as you develop the research subsequently. Aim for quality, not quantity. Look for relevant and recent publications. Most of your references will typically not be more than four years old, although this does depend on your field of study. You will need quite a few more in due course to cover other aspects of your research such as methods and evaluation, but at this stage, you need only a few recent items.

While reading these documents, aim to identify the key issues that are essential to your research question, ideally around four to six.

Compare and contrast the literature, looking for commonalities, agreements, and disagreements and for problem identification and possible answers. Then write up your analysis of the comparison and any conclusions you might reach. The required outcome will be that you can make an informed decision about how to proceed with your primary research, based on the work carried out by other researchers.

Note that ultimately there are no infallible means of assessing the value of a given reference. Its source may be a useful indication, but you have to use your judgment about its value for your research.

Reviewing your sources

Skim read each document to decide whether a book or paper is worth reading in more depth. To do this you need to make use of the various signposts that are available from the:

• notes on a book’s cover can help situate the content
• abstract (for a paper), or the preface (for a book)
• contents page
• introduction
• conclusions
• references section (sometimes called the ‘bibliography’)

In your record, make a brief note (one or two sentences) of the main points.

Next, skim through the opening page of each chapter, or the first paragraph of each section. This should give you enough information to assess whether you need to read the book or paper in more depth, again make a suitable note against that record.

Reading in more detail: SQ3R

If you have decided to look in more detail at a source document that you have to skim read, you can use the well-known ‘SQ3R’ approach (Skimming, Questioning, Reading, Recalling, and Reviewing).

1. Skimming – skim reading the chapter or part of the paper that relates to your topic, or otherwise interests you.

2. Questioning – develop a few questions that you consider the text might answer for you. You can often use journal, chapter, or section titles to help you formulate relevant questions. For example, when studying a journal article with the title, ‘Me and my body: the relevance of the distinction for the difference between withdrawing life support and euthanasia’, you might ask, ‘How is the distinction between withdrawing life support and euthanasia drawn?’

3. Reading – read through the chapter, section, or paper with your questions in mind. Do not make notes at this stage.

4. Recalling – make notes on what you have read. You should normally develop your own summary or answers to your questions. There will also be short passages that you may want to note fully, perhaps to use as a quotation for when you write up your literature review. Be sure to note carefully the page(s) on which the quotation appears.

5. Reviewing – check through the process, perhaps flicking through the section or article again. It is also worth emphasising that if you maintain your reference list as you go along, not only will you save yourself a lot of work in later stages of the research, but you will also have all the necessary details to hand for writing up with fewer mistakes.

(adapted from Blaxter et al., 1996, p. 114)

There is no doubt that this approach takes considerably more effort than sitting back and studying a text passively. The benefit from the extra work involved in the development of a critical approach, which you must adopt for your research.

Following citations in a paper

When you have found (and read) your first couple of papers, you can then use them to seed your search for other useful literature. In this case, we will use this example:

When we looked at the references list in Suppon, J. F. (2010) ‘Life after death: the need to address the legal status of posthumously conceived children',  Family Court Review , vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 228–45, a couple of items, going only by the titles, looked promising:

• Doucettperry, Major M. (2008) ‘To Be Continued: A Look at Posthumous Reproduction As It Relates to Today’s Military’,  The Army Lawyer , no. 420, pp. 1–22.
• Karlin, J. H. (2006) ‘“Daddy, Can you Spare a Dime?”: Intestate Heir Rights of Posthumously Conceived Children’,  Temple Law Review , vol. 79, no. 4, pp. 1317–54.

These are simply the papers that we felt looked most appropriate from the references. There is no formula for determining the best paper; you simply need to read a few and try to develop a feel for which seem the most appropriate for your own research project. You should only be citing papers that contribute to your research in a significant way, or that you have included material from; not everything that you read (and discarded) along the way.

Recording your references

We strongly suggest that you establish a recording system at the outset when you begin your research and keep maintaining records in an organised and complete manner as you progress. You need to choose a consistent method of recording your references; this is a personal choice and can be paper-based or electronic. Do not be tempted to have more than one method or repository as this can lead to confusion and unnecessary extra work. There are software tools available that can help you to both organise your references and incorporate them into your written work. Always keep a backup copy of your records.

The following is a suggestion as to how you might record any document that you think you may use.

Open a new record, and record the basic details:

• author(s), including initials
• date of publication
• title of work or article.

Additionally, for books:

• place of publication
• page numbers of relevant material.

Additionally, for journal papers:

• journal name
• volume and issue number
• page range of the whole article.

‘How many references are needed to make a good literature review?’ There is no straightforward answer to this. In general, an appropriate number of references would be in the range of 15 to 25, with around 20 being typical. However, this is not hard and fast and will depend on the topic and research question chosen.

The crucial thing is to aim for  quality  and  relevance ; there is no credit to be gained from amassing a lengthy list of material, even if it all appears to be relevant. Part of your task is to select a range of references that is appropriate for the length and scope of your research project. It is easier, and more conducive to good research, to handle a smaller number of references specifically chosen to support your argument. Remember also that in general, a student whose research project contained a smaller number of references would generally be expected to demonstrate a deeper and  more critical  understanding of those references.

A colleague once commented on a student’s work in the following vein: ‘I don’t really need you to tell me what the author thinks since I can read her thoughts myself, but I do want to know what  you  think about what the author thinks’. Literature reviews are not a description of what has been written by other people in a particular field, they should be a discussion of what you think of what they have written, and how it helps clarify your own thinking.

This is why critical judgement is so important for your literature review. You must exercise critical judgement when determining which sources to read in-depth, and when evaluating the argument they put forward. Finally, critical judgement is important in communicating how those arguments might frame your research. It should not be a narrative of what you have read and the stories those sources tell. It should be sparing in its description of others’ arguments, and expansive in how those arguments have shaped your own thinking.

You need to exercise critical judgement as to which resources are the most useful and worthy of discussion. Having done this, you also need to ensure that your review is analytical rather than descriptive. A critical review extracts elements from the resource that directly relate to the chosen research interest; it debates them, or compares and contrasts them with how other resources have analysed them. A critical examination of the literature should allow you to develop your understanding of your research question. It should guide you to what knowledge you will need to answer your research question, and begin to develop some subsidiary questions. This will break the content down into more manageable and achievable segments of knowledge that you require.

Some elements of a good critical literature review are:

• relating different writings to each other, indicating their differences and contradictions, and highlighting what they lack
• understanding the values and theories that inform, and colour, reading and writing
• viewing research writing as an environment of contested views and positions
• placing the material in the context of your own research.

An excellent way to critically analyse a document is to use the PROMPT system. The PROMPT system indicates what factors you should consider when evaluating a document. PROMPT stands for:

• Presentation – is the publication easy to read?
• Relevance – how will the publication help address your research aim?
• Objectivity – what is the balance between evidence and opinion? Does the evidence seem balanced? How was the research funded?
• Method – was the research in the publication carried out appropriately?
• Provenance – who is the author and how was the document published?
• Timeliness – is the publication still relevant, or has it been superseded?

By thinking about each of these factors when you read a publication in-depth, you will be able to provide a deeper, more critical analysis of each publication. A final tip for critical reading is to note down your overall impressions and any questions you still have at the end. Keeping a list of such open questions can help you identify the gaps in the literature by noticing which questions were raised, but not answered, by the publication; this, in turn, will guide your research.

In the planning stage, you thought about the gaps in existing knowledge you had identified, and which you then used as a basis to develop your research question. Through the work, you undertook in the earlier stages of your literature review you have a clear understanding of the existing work within the topic. At this point, a comparison of the results of your literature review, with the gaps you had previously identified, will enable you to reflect, and consider, whether you now have enough knowledge to address those gaps. You can then evaluate whether you need to further refine your literature review.

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Conducting Literature Review in Legal Research

• Post author By Dr. Rhea Roy Mammen
• Post date April 2, 2023
• No Comments on Conducting Literature Review in Legal Research

“Literature review in Legal research” , How is it different from literature review in any other discipline? Well! The principle stays the same (that’s the purpose) but it’s more tedious and require a systematic approach. The voluminous literatures in different forms makes the review tiresome compared to other disciplines. Legal research is not restricted to books, journals alone, but extends to other forms such as case laws, statutes, reports etc. It is for this reason, there are some dedicated texts on conducting literature review that was referred to for this blog.

one of the prominent literature in this regard being “Legal Research: How to Find & Understand the Law” by Stephen Elias and Susan Levinkind: This book is a comprehensive guide to legal research and includes a section on conducting a literature review in legal research. (others I will give in the reference )

Lets get to business!

What is literature review

The cliché start! Well, it makes all sense to set the tone and background here.

literature review is a critical evaluation and analysis of existing literature (books, articles, journals, etc.) on a particular topic or research question. It aims to identify relevant and credible sources, summarize the key findings and arguments, and provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge in a specific field.

In short it is gathering the existing literatures in the area of research that will help us to understand the topic, identify the gap along with the other purposes given below

Purpose of literature review

Especially in Legal research, Literature review holds a special position. before that , the prime objective/ purpose of literature review are:

a . Identify and summarize the current state of knowledge on a specific legal topic or research question: It provides a foundation for further research by summarizing and analyzing existing legal literature on a topic. This helps researchers to understand the current state of knowledge

b. Tool to identify the research gap : THE ONE! It helps the scholar to identify the grey area in research (the research gap) that the current research will be covering. This provides lead to justification of the research area.

c. Evaluate the quality and credibility of legal sources : It helps researchers to determine the validity and reliability of the sources, and to identify any biases or limitations.

d. Helps to formulate the research question/ hypothesis : Literatures those In support of the research will help to develop the research .

Ultimately Literature review has dual role : The literature that helps to identify the research gap and the other that supports in the research.

In legal research, there are different methods of literatures reviews. It really doesn’t matter, but it’s good to know. The different methods are based on diversity of the source and nature of information. This provides a clarity to conducting literature reviews:

• Systematic literature review : This method involves a comprehensive and structured search for literature on a specific legal topic, using a predefined set of inclusion and exclusion criteria. This method is commonly used in legal research because it ensures that all relevant literature is identified and analyzed.
• Case law analysis : Case law analysis involves reviewing judicial decisions on a particular legal issue or area of law. This method is useful for identifying legal principles and trends that have developed over time, as well as gaps or inconsistencies in the law.
• Statutory analysis: Statutory analysis involves reviewing legislative materials, such as statutes, regulations, and legislative history, on a particular legal issue. This method is useful for understanding the intent of the legislature, as well as the practical application of the law.
• Comparative analysis : Comparative analysis involves comparing legal sources from different jurisdictions or legal systems on a particular legal issue. This method is useful for identifying differences and similarities in legal approaches, as well as for understanding the impact of cultural and historical factors on the development of the law.
• Thematic analysis: Thematic analysis involves identifying and analyzing common themes or patterns across legal sources on a particular legal issue. This method is useful for understanding the underlying principles and values that guide legal decision-making, as well as for identifying gaps or inconsistencies in the law.

Tools for conducting literature review

We are competing with technology! But that is ok. There are multiple tools that can support the scholars to conduct literature review. This can in fact save time and invest in creativity. Some thing to look at are:

• Reference management software: Reference management software, such as EndNote, Mendeley, or Zotero, can help you to organize your sources and create citations and bibliographies. These tools allow you to import and export references from different databases, and to automatically format citations in various styles.
• Search engines and databases : There are several search engines and databases that can help you to find relevant literature, such as Google Scholar, PubMed, JSTOR, and LexisNexis. These tools allow you to search for articles, books, and other sources using keywords and other search criteria.
• Text mining software: Text mining software, such as NVivo or Atlas.ti, can help you to analyze large amounts of text and to identify themes and patterns in the literature. These tools allow you to code and categorize your sources, and to visualize your findings using various charts and graphs.
• Literature review software: There are several software programs designed specifically for literature review, s uch as Covidence, Rayyan, or DistillerSR . These tools can help you to manage and organize your sources, screen and select relevant studies, and analyze the data more efficiently.

Reporting Literature review

Ah ha! Allas the important part – reporting or documenting the literature review. There are different methods that is followed in literature review.

a. Chapter wise review: Some would report the literature based on the chapterisation (especially for PhD and Post Doctoral fellowship)

b. Academic discussion : Especially for articles, proposals, write ups, literature reviews are recorded in the body of the text as academic discourses. Where they provide the reference in the citation and emphasis is on the prominent authors.

c. Thematic : Every research has a key word connected, and it is very common that each can be used as heads for reporting literature review

d. one running text: Some would prefer (rather institutions) would prefer where literatures are discussed as one running text.

Now the question is, how is recorded? Is it simply recording the summary of the literature? NO

The whole idea is to gather the take away from the existing literature and show casing how it is connected to your research and what is the missing area in that literature.

I have used a generic example of literature review for the purpose of understanding. I have used a relatively over discussed topic for the purpose of easy understanding .

Topic: The impact of the Right to Education Act on access to education in India

• Identify the research question: How has the Right to Education Act (RTE) impacted access to education in India?
• Conduct a search for relevant literature: Search for literature on the topic using search engines and databases. Use keywords such as “Right to Education Act”, “education in India”, “access to education”, and “impact of RTE”.
• Screen the literature: Review the titles and abstracts of the articles and select those that are relevant to the research question. Exclude articles that are not related to the topic or that are not written in English.
• Analyze the literature: Read the selected articles and identify the key themes and findings. Organize the articles by themes, such as the impact of RTE on enrollment, quality of education, and equity in education.
• Evaluate the quality and credibility of the sources: Assess the quality and credibility of the sources by evaluating the methodology, data sources, and author credentials. Use citation analysis to identify highly cited articles and authors.

Synthesize the findings: Summarize the key findings from the literature review and identify any gaps or inconsistencies in the literature. Use the literature review to develop research questions and hypotheses, and to inform policy and practice

Existing literatures:

• Muralidharan, K., & Sundararaman, V. (2013). The impact of the Right to Education Act on student outcomes and school inputs: Evidence from a large-scale randomized evaluation. Policy Research Working Paper, 6643. World Bank.
• Jha, N., & Gupta, V. (2018). Right to Education in India: An analysis of the impact of RTE Act 2009. Journal of Educational Planning and Administration, 32(1), 5-20.
• Nambissan, G. B., & Dash, S. K. (2017). Implementation of the Right to Education Act in India: Challenges and the way forward. Prospects, 47(2), 231-242.
• Desai, S., & Vanneman, R. (2016). India’s primary education challenge: The impact of the Right to Education Act. Economic & Political Weekly, 51(7), 51-58.

The Right to Education Act (RTE), passed in 2009, is a landmark legislation aimed at providing free and compulsory education to all children between the ages of 6 and 14 years in India. The implementation of the RTE Act has been a subject of much debate and scrutiny, with concerns raised about its impact on access, quality, and equity in education. In this literature review, we focus on the impact of the RTE Act on access to education in India.

Muralidharan and Sundararaman (2013) conducted a large-scale randomized evaluation of the RTE Act in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The study aimed to assess the impact of the RTE Act on student outcomes and school inputs. The authors found that the RTE Act had a significant positive impact on enrollment in schools, particularly among girls and children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The study also found that the RTE Act had a positive impact on school inputs, such as the availability of toilets and drinking water, which are important factors in ensuring access to education.

The findings of this study are consistent with other studies that have examined the impact of the RTE Act on access to education in India. Jha and Gupta (2018) conducted a study in the state of Bihar and found that the RTE Act had a positive impact on enrollment in primary schools. Nambissan and Dash (2017) examined the implementation of the RTE Act in India and found that while there were challenges in ensuring access to education, the Act had contributed to increased enrollment and retention rates.

However, while the RTE Act has had a positive impact on access to education in India, there are still challenges that need to be addressed. Desai and Vanneman (2016) conducted a study that examined the primary education challenge in India and found that while the RTE Act had led to increased enrollment, there were still issues with the quality of education and the high dropout rates. The study highlighted the need for improvements in teacher training and support, as well as the need for greater investment in infrastructure and resources.

In conclusion, the literature suggests that the RTE Act has had a positive impact on access to education in India, particularly among girls and children from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, there are still challenges that need to be addressed to ensure that all children have access to quality education. The findings of this literature review justify further research to examine the impact of the RTE Act on other aspects of education, such as quality and equity, and to identify strategies to address the challenges in its implementation.

POINTER: For PhD , One of the major literatures are the PhD’s earlier conducted. This goes for LLM dissertation.

SPOILER: NOW THINK , what is the difference between literature survey and Literature review

WORST: I wanted to share the steps for literature review… but I am saving it for the upcoming training! See you then

Oh thank you for reading all the way down, Pretty lengthy uh: Hope it helped

By Dr. Rhea Roy Mammen

Dr. Mammen is founder & Director (Academics) of Jusfocus Academic Consultancy. Dr. Mammen is an international fellow under two prestigious fellowships and has numerous international projects to her credit. Academia & research is her passion that drives her to engage with scholars.

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A Guide to Literature Reviews

Importance of a good literature review.

• Conducting the Literature Review
• Structure and Writing Style
• Types of Literature Reviews
• Citation Management Software This link opens in a new window
• Acknowledgements

A literature review is not only a summary of key sources, but  has an organizational pattern which combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories . A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that informs how you are planning to investigate a research problem. The analytical features of a literature review might:

• Give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations,
• Trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates,
• Depending on the situation, evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant research, or
• Usually in the conclusion of a literature review, identify where gaps exist in how a problem has been researched to date.

The purpose of a literature review is to:

• Place each work in the context of its contribution to understanding the research problem being studied.
• Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration.
• Identify new ways to interpret prior research.
• Reveal any gaps that exist in the literature.
• Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies.
• Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort.
• Point the way in fulfilling a need for additional research.
• Locate your own research within the context of existing literature [very important].
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Literature Reviews

• What is a literature review?
• Steps in the Literature Review Process
• Define your research question
• Determine inclusion and exclusion criteria
• Choose databases and search
• Review Results
• Synthesize Results
• Analyze Results
• Librarian Support

What is a Literature Review?

A literature or narrative review is a comprehensive review and analysis of the published literature on a specific topic or research question. The literature that is reviewed contains: books, articles, academic articles, conference proceedings, association papers, and dissertations. It contains the most pertinent studies and points to important past and current research and practices. It provides background and context, and shows how your research will contribute to the field. 

A literature review should: 

• Provide a comprehensive and updated review of the literature;
• Explain why this review has taken place;
• Articulate a position or hypothesis;
• Acknowledge and account for conflicting and corroborating points of view

From  S age Research Methods

Purpose of a Literature Review

A literature review can be written as an introduction to a study to:

• Demonstrate how a study fills a gap in research
• Compare a study with other research that's been done

Or it can be a separate work (a research article on its own) which:

• Organizes or describes a topic
• Describes variables within a particular issue/problem

Limitations of a Literature Review

Some of the limitations of a literature review are:

• It's a snapshot in time. Unlike other reviews, this one has beginning, a middle and an end. There may be future developments that could make your work less relevant.
• It may be too focused. Some niche studies may miss the bigger picture.
• It can be difficult to be comprehensive. There is no way to make sure all the literature on a topic was considered.
• It is easy to be biased if you stick to top tier journals. There may be other places where people are publishing exemplary research. Look to open access publications and conferences to reflect a more inclusive collection. Also, make sure to include opposing views (and not just supporting evidence).

Source: Grant, Maria J., and Andrew Booth. “A Typology of Reviews: An Analysis of 14 Review Types and Associated Methodologies.” Health Information & Libraries Journal, vol. 26, no. 2, June 2009, pp. 91–108. Wiley Online Library, doi:10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x.

Meryl Brodsky : Communication and Information Studies

Hannah Chapman Tripp : Biology, Neuroscience

Carolyn Cunningham : Human Development & Family Sciences, Psychology, Sociology

Larayne Dallas : Engineering

Janelle Hedstrom : Special Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Ed Leadership & Policy ​

Susan Macicak : Linguistics

Imelda Vetter : Dell Medical School

For help in other subject areas, please see the guide to library specialists by subject .

Periodically, UT Libraries runs a workshop covering the basics and library support for literature reviews. While we try to offer these once per academic year, we find providing the recording to be helpful to community members who have missed the session. Following is the most recent recording of the workshop, Conducting a Literature Review. To view the recording, a UT login is required.

• October 26, 2022 recording
• Last Updated: Oct 26, 2022 2:49 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/literaturereviews

Libraries | Research Guides

Literature reviews, what is a literature review, learning more about how to do a literature review.

• Planning the Review
• The Research Question
• Choosing Where to Search
• Organizing the Review
• Writing the Review

A literature review is a review and synthesis of existing research on a topic or research question. A literature review is meant to analyze the scholarly literature, make connections across writings and identify strengths, weaknesses, trends, and missing conversations. A literature review should address different aspects of a topic as it relates to your research question. A literature review goes beyond a description or summary of the literature you have read. 

• Sage Research Methods Core Collection This link opens in a new window SAGE Research Methods supports research at all levels by providing material to guide users through every step of the research process. SAGE Research Methods is the ultimate methods library with more than 1000 books, reference works, journal articles, and instructional videos by world-leading academics from across the social sciences, including the largest collection of qualitative methods books available online from any scholarly publisher. – Publisher

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Why is it important to do a literature review in research?

The importance of scientific communication in the healthcare industry

The Importance and Role of Biostatistics in Clinical Research

 “A substantive, thorough, sophisticated literature review is a precondition for doing substantive, thorough, sophisticated research”. Boote and Baile 2005

Authors of manuscripts treat writing a literature review as a routine work or a mere formality. But a seasoned one knows the purpose and importance of a well-written literature review.  Since it is one of the basic needs for researches at any level, they have to be done vigilantly. Only then the reader will know that the basics of research have not been neglected.

The aim of any literature review is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of existing knowledge in a particular field without adding any new contributions.   Being built on existing knowledge they help the researcher to even turn the wheels of the topic of research.  It is possible only with profound knowledge of what is wrong in the existing findings in detail to overpower them.  For other researches, the literature review gives the direction to be headed for its success. 

The common perception of literature review and reality:

As per the common belief, literature reviews are only a summary of the sources related to the research. And many authors of scientific manuscripts believe that they are only surveys of what are the researches are done on the chosen topic.  But on the contrary, it uses published information from pertinent and relevant sources like

• Scholarly books
• Scientific papers
• Latest studies in the field
• Established school of thoughts
• Relevant articles from renowned scientific journals

and many more for a field of study or theory or a particular problem to do the following:

• Summarize into a brief account of all information
• Synthesize the information by restructuring and reorganizing
• Critical evaluation of a concept or a school of thought or ideas
• Familiarize the authors to the extent of knowledge in the particular field
• Encapsulate
• Compare & contrast

By doing the above on the relevant information, it provides the reader of the scientific manuscript with the following for a better understanding of it:

• It establishes the authors’  in-depth understanding and knowledge of their field subject
• It gives the background of the research
• Portrays the scientific manuscript plan of examining the research result
• Illuminates on how the knowledge has changed within the field
• Highlights what has already been done in a particular field
• Information of the generally accepted facts, emerging and current state of the topic of research
• Identifies the research gap that is still unexplored or under-researched fields
• Demonstrates how the research fits within a larger field of study
• Provides an overview of the sources explored during the research of a particular topic

Importance of literature review in research:

The importance of literature review in scientific manuscripts can be condensed into an analytical feature to enable the multifold reach of its significance.  It adds value to the legitimacy of the research in many ways:

• Provides the interpretation of existing literature in light of updated developments in the field to help in establishing the consistency in knowledge and relevancy of existing materials
• It helps in calculating the impact of the latest information in the field by mapping their progress of knowledge.
• It brings out the dialects of contradictions between various thoughts within the field to establish facts
• The research gaps scrutinized initially are further explored to establish the latest facts of theories to add value to the field
• Indicates the current research place in the schema of a particular field
• Provides information for relevancy and coherency to check the research
• Apart from elucidating the continuance of knowledge, it also points out areas that require further investigation and thus aid as a starting point of any future research
• Justifies the research and sets up the research question
• Sets up a theoretical framework comprising the concepts and theories of the research upon which its success can be judged
• Helps to adopt a more appropriate methodology for the research by examining the strengths and weaknesses of existing research in the same field
• Increases the significance of the results by comparing it with the existing literature
• Provides a point of reference by writing the findings in the scientific manuscript
• Helps to get the due credit from the audience for having done the fact-finding and fact-checking mission in the scientific manuscripts
• The more the reference of relevant sources of it could increase more of its trustworthiness with the readers
• Helps to prevent plagiarism by tailoring and uniquely tweaking the scientific manuscript not to repeat other’s original idea
• By preventing plagiarism , it saves the scientific manuscript from rejection and thus also saves a lot of time and money
• Helps to evaluate, condense and synthesize gist in the author’s own words to sharpen the research focus
• Helps to compare and contrast to  show the originality and uniqueness of the research than that of the existing other researches
• Rationalizes the need for conducting the particular research in a specified field
• Helps to collect data accurately for allowing any new methodology of research than the existing ones
• Enables the readers of the manuscript to answer the following questions of its readers for its better chances for publication
• What do the researchers know?
• What do they not know?
• Is the scientific manuscript reliable and trustworthy?
• What are the knowledge gaps of the researcher?

22. It helps the readers to identify the following for further reading of the scientific manuscript:

• What has been already established, discredited and accepted in the particular field of research
• Areas of controversy and conflicts among different schools of thought
• Unsolved problems and issues in the connected field of research
• The emerging trends and approaches
• How the research extends, builds upon and leaves behind from the previous research

A profound literature review with many relevant sources of reference will enhance the chances of the scientific manuscript publication in renowned and reputed scientific journals .

References:

http://www.math.montana.edu/jobo/phdprep/phd6.pdf

journal Publishing services  |  Scientific Editing Services  |  Medical Writing Services  |  scientific research writing service  |  Scientific communication services

Related Topics:

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Making literature reviews more ethical: a researcher and health sciences librarian collaborative process

Bejoy thomas.

1 Department of Psychosocial & Rehabilitation Oncology, Tom Baker Cancer Centre, CancerContol Alberta, Alberta Health Services, Calgary, AB, T2S 3CI, Canada

2 Department of Oncology, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4, Canada

Admasu Tachble

Delshani peiris, rebecca malhi, glenys godlovitch.

3 Alberta Cancer Research Ethics Committee, CancerContol Alberta, Alberta Health Services, Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4, Canada

Yongtao Lin

4 Knowledge Resource Service, Knowledge Management Department, Tom Baker Cancer Centre, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4, Canada

Background:

With emphasis on evidence-based medical care, ‘evidence’ is often the result of literature reviews. Hence, the critical question, “are literature reviews comprehensive?”

This study compares the literature generated by a researcher and a health sciences librarian (HSL).

The Research Associate and the HSL conducted a parallel, segregated literature search on ‘patient-centered care’.

The Research Associate identified 215 manuscripts, and the HSL 129 manuscripts. Overlap was only 55 manuscripts. Differences in process and blind spots are discussed.

Conclusion:

To improve the quality of research outcomes, it seems prudent and ethical to have a synergistic collaboration between researchers and HSLs. Given that this is just one case study that has looked into the issue, further research is strongly encouraged.

Lay abstract: Literature reviews are not just compilations of easily accessible research and should not be taken lightly. Literature reviews are critical to decision-making in clinical trials, medical care and directions of health systems. We wanted to see if researchers and health science librarians working in isolation would create a robust and balanced literature review. This case study showed that both approaches have shortcomings. We recommend that researcher and health science librarian must work together for the success of improving medical care.

Research is cumulative in nature, building on prior studies on the topic of interest. Thus, it is important for the researcher to have robust understanding of the extant knowledge. A comprehensive literature review will describe the research concepts, ground critical appraisal of previously published studies and identify gaps or inconsistencies in the knowledge base, which merit further investigation. Reviewing the literature requires several skills, and is usually done in one of two ways. In the first approach, the researcher (or the research team) critically evaluates relevant information and effectively scans the literature for both breadth and depth of information, to the best of their ability [ 1 ]. Consequently, the researcher/team's capacity to locate and access appropriate studies influences the quality of the research reviewed [ 2 ].

The second option is to engage the services of a health sciences librarian (HSL) with in-depth knowledge of various evidence resources and the professional training to conduct comprehensive literature searches. The comparative advantage researchers have by working with a HSL in the research process is well documented [ 3–7 ]. Yet, the librarian often tends to have a subordinate role and the partnership could be summarized as ‘we (the researcher) gave them the key words, they had a few questions for us, and a week later we got the reference list’. Can the literature review process be optimized? In this case report, we compare the results of literature reviews conducted by a researcher and a HSL.

Review teams

Two separate teams were created for the literature search with a principal investigator (PI) taking the role of independent subject expert in each. One team was comprised of a PhD-trained research associate (RA; A Tachble) and the PI (B Thomas). The other team was comprised of the HSL (Master of Library Information Sciences; Y Lin) and the PI. The PI facilitated the process but did not share information between groups. Thus, both teams conducted parallel, segregated literature searches on the same topic.

Literature review procedure

The literature review process was conducted in four steps: determine the topic of interest; define inclusion and exclusion criteria; compile the literature (total hits); and evaluate the literature to determine ‘relevant hits’ by relevance of the identified literature to the topic of interest (e.g., use of token keyword); a predefined context or setting ; the nature of each hit – is it original (clinical) research or a theoretical stance; and if the original research's methodology could facilitate a decision process to clinical practice (i.e., is process A better than, or equivalent or cost effective, among others compared with process B?)

In the first step, we determined the existing background information on the chosen topic – ‘patient-centered care’ – and began a broad-scale search to identify concepts and to create a provisional list of keywords: patient-centered care, family-centered care, cancer, malignant neoplasm, chronic disease(s), tertiary care, rural care and healthcare provider. For step two, we defined the inclusion criteria (articles published during 2000 and onwards, English language and print/electronic media access to full text, among others) and exclusion criteria (non-English language, personal communications, nonelectronic materials, publications dated prior to 2000 and pediatric/pediatric population) for the literature. The PI then provided these to the RA and the librarian.

The literature search (the third step) included searching through electronic research databases, conference proceedings, dissertation abstracts among others to identify published articles, reports and works in progress. Both teams accessed Cochrane, PsycInfo and MEDLINE data sources to locate published studies/literature addressing patient-centered care. In addition to these, the librarian also searched EMBASE, EBSCO Business Source Complete and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), ProQuest Dissertations and Thesis and Web of Science. The RA accessed PubMed and Google Scholar as well.

The literature reviews were evaluated and scored using the following metric:

• Relevance of the identified literature to the topic of patient or family centeredness (10 points);
• Context or setting: cancer (10 points) or chronic disease(s) (5 points);
• Nature of manuscript: original research (e.g., clinical practice; 10 points) or theoretical concept (literature review, hypothesis among others)? (5 points);
• If the study had an evaluation component and/or used a study design to differentiate between study groups (5 points, respectively) in the manuscript.

The RA and the PI completed the shortlisted manuscript scoring for both teams. A cutoff score for relevance was set at 20 points.

Results are displayed in Figure 1 . The RA obtained 1275 total hits with 215 manuscripts meeting the cutoff score for relevance. The librarian obtained 1232 hits, with 184 manuscripts meeting the relevant scoring criteria. Among the relevant manuscripts, there was a general overlap of 55 (16% of final literature capture) manuscripts between the two teams. The total unique literature capture was 344 manuscripts. The librarian's unique contribution to this literature capture (excluding the general overlap) was 129 manuscripts (37.5% of the final literature capture). Similarly, the unique contribution of the RA was 160 manuscripts (46.5%).

HSL: Health science librarian; PI: Principal investigator.

In this case study, we note two intertwined but critical aspects. First, the literature capture process by a researcher is a function of their training and experience. The hits obtained here are therefore unique to this researcher (A Tachble); other researchers may have higher or lower hit rates. This leads us to the process resulting in this variance. The librarian worked from the key words and used possible subject headings, related keywords and synonyms to refine a search process. Given that librarians are well acquainted with the anatomy of literature, they work from a very algorithmic process of deductive steps – from creating a very large catchment area, and reducing it by incorporating the exclusion criteria, and honing in on the critical mass by utilizing the inclusion criteria, to subject heading or other control vocabularies. This process of using documented search strategies is replicable between most librarians. Even a few researchers possibly follow these steps. Yet, we believe that most researchers will use databases to create citation lists – particularly databases like PubMed and Google Scholar. This is in essence browsing and utilizes snowballing techniques like perusing through the bibliography of identified hits. Interestingly, searching the term ‘Google Scholar’ in PubMed retrieves about 3926 results, as of August 2015. It would also seem that the 768 + 122 unique hits obtained by the researcher is a result of snowballing and being able to review its content as opposed to capturing it algorithmically; in other words, the manuscript may not be accurately represented by keywords and by extension of medical subject headings (MeSH) and other indexed terms.

The second important interrelated aspect we raise is time utilized by the researcher to compile the literature search. In this case study, the researcher took about 4 weeks to compile 1275 hits. Not all researchers have the luxury of an extended period of time to undertake a comprehensive literature review alone [ 8 ]. In contrast, the librarian would normally take 1–2 days to create and run algorithms, scan the results and rerun the algorithms with a few tweaks to improve or fine-tune the results.

We therefore contend that a literature review by a researcher alone may not be comprehensive using methods of browsing and snowballing. This is quite obvious in Figure 1 where 49 manuscripts that were identified by both teams were not included in the researchers’ final list, primarily because the full manuscript/source document could not be identified. Although their training in resource identification and retrieval is indispensable [ 9–11 ], the expectation that the literature search being the HSL's sole responsibility is – in our opinion – flawed. Our case study seems to indicate that in order to accomplish a literature search with due diligence, a deliberate researcher–HSL collaboration is necessary. Perhaps working in isolation from each other, then collating their findings could be a ‘best practice’ that produces a robust and comprehensive knowledge set.

Even though this is a single case study, and further research is strongly encouraged, from an ethics perspective, these results have important implications for clinical and institutional practices. Patients place their trust in clinicians to provide expert advice and care and in healthcare institutions to facilitate the delivery of good clinical practice through sound, well-informed guidelines. Clinical teams and institutions are legally and ethically bound to provide care that is partly knowledge-based, partly policy-based and partly skills-based. Each of these aspects has its relevant standard that is to be matched or surpassed by competent practitioners. The imperatives of evidence-based medicine are to: ensure that clinicians are aware of what would provide their patient populations with the best care and interventions possible, and inform institutional policy-makers about the relevant options in determining policy. Our findings suggest that the quality of the literature review yielded by the researcher–HSL partnership would satisfy these imperatives.

There are systemic implications too. One is with respect to informing development of clinical guidelines. The presentation of incomplete information may tend to generate an underinformed practice guideline that if implemented could result in causing avoidable harms (or perhaps even in misunderstood benefits). Another systemic implication is that by placing reliance on one form of literature review over the other, the direction of future research could become skewed. As the differences between results for the two searches show, literature blind spots arise. An author is not well placed to be able to report his or her own blind spots, but once published in a peer-reviewed forum, the article or report takes on a certain authority and lives a life of its own in future literature reviews. Any one viewpoint can only tell the story from its own perspective even when done with the good intention of generating evidence-based guidance for actual clinical decision-making. With this in mind, the advantage of having a multiple expertise-enriched literature review is obvious.

Conclusion & future perspective

The results of this single case study demonstrate the advantages that researchers could have by not only involving professional librarians but also by becoming active participants in the literature search endeavor. The ethical implication of the absence of this process is large given the blind spots in the current way of doing literature reviews. For quality control purposes, we believe that that journal editors and peer-reviewers should have a checklist or a process in place to ensure that due diligence in the literature review has been done on any new submission.

Executive summary

• A comprehensive literature review is the cornerstone of any scientific research endeavor.
• Literature reviews are usually conducted by a researcher/team or by a health sciences librarian (HSL).
• The literature capture processes used by researchers and HSLs working in isolation from each other – ‘browsing’ versus ‘algorithmic searching’ – are different, and both lead to blind spots.
• To accomplish due diligence in a literature search – which has ethical and systemic implications – a deliberate researcher–HSL collaboration is necessary.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Informed consent disclosure

The authors state that they have obtained verbal and written informed consent from the patient/patients for the inclusion of their medical and treatment history within this case report.

Open access

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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• Open access
• Published: 14 May 2024

Research outcomes informing the selection of public health interventions and strategies to implement them: A cross-sectional survey of Australian policy-maker and practitioner preferences

• Luke Wolfenden 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• Alix Hall 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• Adrian Bauman 1 , 4 , 5 ,
• Andrew Milat 6 , 7 ,
• Rebecca Hodder 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• Emily Webb 1 ,
• Kaitlin Mooney 1 ,
• Serene Yoong 1 , 2 , 3 , 8 , 9 ,
• Rachel Sutherland 1 , 2 , 3 &
• Sam McCrabb 1 , 2 , 3  

Health Research Policy and Systems volume  22 , Article number:  58 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

A key role of public health policy-makers and practitioners is to ensure beneficial interventions are implemented effectively enough to yield improvements in public health. The use of evidence to guide public health decision-making to achieve this is recommended. However, few studies have examined the relative value, as reported by policy-makers and practitioners, of different broad research outcomes (that is, measures of cost, acceptability, and effectiveness). To guide the conduct of research and better inform public health policy and practice, this study aimed at describing the research outcomes that Australian policy-makers and practitioners consider important for their decision-making when selecting: (a) public health interventions; (b) strategies to support their implementation; and (c) to assess the differences in research outcome preferences between policy-makers and practitioners.

An online value-weighting survey was conducted with Australian public health policy-makers and practitioners working in the field of non-communicable disease prevention. Participants were presented with a list of research outcomes and were asked to select up to five they considered most critical to their decision-making. They then allocated 100 points across these – allocating more points to outcomes perceived as more important. Outcome lists were derived from a review and consolidation of evaluation and outcome frameworks in the fields of public health knowledge translation and implementation. We used descriptive statistics to report relative preferences overall and for policy-makers and practitioners separately.

Of the 186 participants; 90 primarily identified as policy-makers and 96 as public health prevention practitioners. Overall, research outcomes of effectiveness, equity, feasibility, and sustainability were identified as the four most important outcomes when considering either interventions or strategies to implement them. Scores were similar for most outcomes between policy-makers and practitioners.

For Australian policy-makers and practitioners working in the field of non-communicable disease prevention, outcomes related to effectiveness, equity, feasibility, and sustainability appear particularly important to their decisions about the interventions they select and the strategies they employ to implement them. The findings suggest researchers should seek to meet these information needs and prioritize the inclusion of such outcomes in their research and dissemination activities. The extent to which these outcomes are critical to informing the decision of policy-makers and practitioners working in other jurisdictions or contexts warrants further investigation.

Peer Review reports

Research evidence has a key role in public health policy-making [ 1 ]. Consideration of research is important to maximize the potential impact of investments in health policies and services. Public health policy-makers and practitioners frequently seek out research to inform their professional decision-making [ 2 ]. However, they report that published research is not well aligned with their evidence needs [ 3 , 4 ]. Public health decision-making is a complex and dynamic process where evidence is used in a variety of ways, and for different purposes [ 3 , 5 , 6 ]. Ensuring research meets the evidence needs of public health policy-makers and practitioners is, therefore, an important strategy to improve its use in decision-making [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ].

“Research outcomes” are broad domains or constructs measured to evaluate the impacts of health policies, practices or interventions, such as their effectiveness or acceptability. They are distinct from “outcome measures”, which are the measures selected to assess an outcome. Outcome measures require detailed specification of measurement parameters, including the measurement techniques and instrument, and consideration of the suitability of its properties (for example, validity) given the research question. The inclusion of research outcomes considered most relevant to public health policy-makers and practitioners is one way in which researchers can support evidence-informed decision-making.

Policy-makers are primarily responsible for developing public health policy and selecting and resourcing health programs. Practitioners are primarily responsible for supporting their implementation. As such, public health policy-makers and practitioners require research to: (i) help identify “what works” to guide the selection of interventions that will be beneficial for their community, for example, those that are effective in improving health, and acceptable to the target population and/or (ii) to help identify “how to implement” effective intervention, for example, strategies that are capable of achieving implementation at a level sufficient to accrue benefit, are affordable and reach the targeted population [ 6 , 11 ]. Research that includes outcomes relevant to these responsibilities facilitates evidence-informed decision-making by public health policy-makers and practitioners.

Initiatives such as the World Health Organization INTEGRATe Evidence (WHO INTEGRATE) framework [ 12 ], and the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) Evidence to Decision framework [ 13 ] have been designed to support the selection of public health interventions. Application of these frameworks required the collation and synthesis of a range of scientific evidence including studies employing qualitative and quantitative research designs. Collectively, the frameworks suggest public health policy-makers and practitioners should consider, alongside research outcomes reporting the effectiveness of a public health intervention, other research outcomes such as cost–effectiveness, potential harms and acceptability of an intervention to patients or community.

Several authors have also sought to guide outcomes researchers should include in implementation studies [ 11 ]. Proctor and colleagues defined a range of implementation research outcomes [distinct from service or clinical (intervention) effectiveness outcomes] – including intervention adoption, appropriateness, feasibility, fidelity, cost, penetration and sustainability [ 14 ]. This work helped standardize how the field of implementation science defined, measured and reported implementation outcomes. More recently McKay and colleagues put forward measures of implementation “determinants” and “outcomes” and proposed a “minimum set” of such outcomes to include in implementation and scale-up studies. The implementation research outcomes proposed by both Proctor and McKay and colleagues were developed primarily from the input of researchers to improving the quality and consistency of reporting in implementation science. However, the relative value of these outcomes to the decision-making of public health policy-makers, and in particular practitioners, has largely been unexplored.

While several studies have explored policy-maker and practitioner research evidence preferences, these have focused on a small number of potential outcomes [ 15 , 16 , 17 ]. An appraisal of the potential value, and importance of a comprehensive range of research outcomes to public health policy-maker and practitioner decision-making, therefore, is warranted. In this study, we sought to quantify the relative importance of research outcomes from the perspective of Australian public health policy-makers and practitioners working in the field of non-communicable disease prevention (hereafter referred to as “prevention” policy-makers or practitioners). Specifically, using a value-weighting methodology to elicit relative preferences, the study aimed to describe: (a) research the outcomes prevention policy-makers and practitioners regard as important to their decision-making when selecting a public health intervention to address an identified health issue, (b), research the outcomes prevention policy-makers and practitioners regard as important to their decision-making when selecting a strategy to support the implementation of a public health intervention in the community and (c) assess the differences between prevention policy-makers and practitioners regarding their research outcome preferences.

Design and setting

An online cross-sectional value-weighting survey was conducted with Australian public health prevention policy-makers and practitioners. This study was undertaken as one step of a broader program of work to establish a core outcome set that has been prospectively registered on the Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials (COMET database; https://www.comet-initiative.org/Studies/Details/1791 ).

Participant eligibility

To be eligible, participants had to self-identify as having worked as a public health prevention policy-maker or practitioner at a government or non-government health organization within the past 5 years. While the term “policy-maker” has been used to describe legislators in US studies, in Australian research it has broadly been used to describe employees of government departments (or non-government agencies) involved in the development of public health policy [ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ]. Policy-makers are not typically involved in the direct implementation of policy or the delivery of health services. We defined a “policy-maker” as a professional who makes decisions, plans and actions that are undertaken to achieve specific public health prevention goals on behalf of a government or non-government organization [ 23 ]. Practitioners are typically employed by government or non-government organizations responsible for prevention service provision, and are directly involved in the implementation or supporting the implementation of public health policies or programs. Specifically, we defined a “practitioner” as a professional engaged in the delivery of public health prevention programs, implementing services or models of care in health and community settings (definition developed by research team). Research and evaluation are a core competency of the public health prevention workforce in Australia [ 24 ], as it is in other countries [ 25 ]. As such, participants may be engaged in research and have published research studies. Researchers, such as those employed by academic institutions only and without an explicit public health policy or practice role in a policy or practice organization, were excluded.

Recruitment

Comprehensive methods were used to recruit individuals through several agencies. First, email invitations were distributed to Australian government health agencies at local (for example, New South Wales Local Health District Population Health units), state (for example, departments or ministries of health) and national levels, as well as to non-government organizations (for example, Cancer Council) and professional societies (for example, Public Health Association Australia). Registered practitioners with the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) from Australia were contacted by public domain emails or on LinkedIn (where identified) with the study invitation. Authors who had published articles of relevant topics from 2018 to 2021 within three Australian public health journals [ Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health ( ANZJPH ), Health Promotion Journal of Australia ( HPJA ) and Public Health Research and Practice ( PHRP )] were invited to participate in the study. Invitation emails included links to the information statement for participants and the online survey. The online survey was also promoted on the social media account of a partnering organization [National Centre of Implementation Science (NCOIS)] as well as on Twitter and LinkedIn. From these social media accounts individuals could self-select to participate in the online survey. Reminder emails were sent to non-responders at approximately 2 and 4 weeks following the initial email invitation.

Data collection and measures

The online survey was kept on servers at the Hunter Medical Research Institute, New South Wales, Australia, and deployed using the REDCap software [ 26 ], a secured web-based application for building and managing online surveys and databases. The length of the survey was approximately 20–30 min in duration.

Professional characteristics

Participants completed brief items assessing their professional role (that is, practitioner or policy-maker), the number of years’ experience as policy-makers or practitioners, their professional qualifications and the prevention risk factors (for example, smoking, nutrition, physical activity, injury, sexual health, etc.) for which they had expertise.

Valued intervention and implementation outcomes

We sought to identify outcomes that may be valued by public health policy-makers and practitioners when making decisions about what policies and/or programs of interventions to implement and how implementation could best occur. We separated outcomes on this basis, consistent with recommendations of the evidence policy and practice [ 27 ], the effectiveness–implementation research typology [ 28 , 29 ] and trial conduct and reporting guidelines [ 30 ]. This is illustrated in a broad study logic model (Fig.  1 ).

Both effective interventions and effective implementation are required to improve health outcomes

The authors undertook a review of intervention- and implementation-relevant outcome frameworks to determine program and intervention outcomes that may be of interest to policy-makers and practitioners, including the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance (RE-AIM) Framework [ 31 , 32 ], the Intervention Scalability Assessment Tool (ISAT) [ 18 ] and Proctor and colleagues’ implementation outcome definitions [ 14 ] as well as a series of publications on the topic [ 31 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 ]. This was used to generate a comprehensive inventory of all possible outcomes (and outcome definitions) that may be of interest to public health policy-makers and practitioners. The outcome list was then reduced following grouping of outcomes addressing similar constructs or concepts. A panel of 16 public health policy-makers provided feedback on their perceived importance of each outcome for evidence-informed policy and practice decision-making, as well as the proposed outcome definition. This process occurred over two rounds until no further suggested improvements or clarifications were provided or requested, yielding a final list of 17 outcomes to inform the selection of public health intervention and 16 outcomes for the selection of implementation strategies (Additional file 1 : Table S1). Panel participants also pre-tested the survey instrument; however, they were not invited to participate in the value-weighting study.

Participating public health policy-makers and practitioners completed the value-weighting survey. Value-weighting surveys offer advantages over other methods to identify preferences (such as ranks or mean scores on a rating scale), as they provide an opportunity to quantify the relative preference or value of different dissemination strategies from the perspective of public health policy-makers or practitioners. Specifically, they were only presented with the list of outcomes and their definition, and were asked to select up to 5 of the 17 interventions “that they considered are critical to their decision-making when selecting a public health intervention to address an identified health issue” and 16 implementation outcomes “that they consider to be critical to their decision-making when selecting a strategy to support the implementation of a public health intervention in the community” in a decision-making context. Participants were then asked to value weight, allocating 100 points across their five (or less) intervention and implementation outcomes. A higher allocation of points represented a greater level of perceived importance. In this way, participants weight the allocation of points to outcomes based on preference. No statistical weights are applied in the analysis. Participants were asked to select up to five outcomes as this restriction forced a prioritization of the outcomes among participants. The identification of a small number of critical outcomes, rather than all relevant outcomes, is also recommended to facilitate research outcome harmonization [ 44 , 45 ].

Statistical analysis

All statistical analyses and data management were undertaken in SAS version 9.3. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the study sample. Similar to other value-weighting studies, we used descriptive analyses to identify the intervention and implementation outcomes ranked from highest to lowest importance [ 46 , 47 ]. Items not selected or allocated any points were assumed a score of 0, to reflect that they were not perceived as a high-priority outcome by the participant. Specifically, the mean points allocated to each of the individual outcomes were calculated and ranked in descending order. This was calculated overall for the entire participant sample, as well as separately by policy-makers and practitioners. As points were assigned in free-text fields, in instances where participants allocated more or less than 100 points across the individual items, the points they allocated were standardized to 100. Differences in the points allocated to each individual outcome by policy-maker/practitioner role were explored using Mann–Whitney U test. To examine any differences in the outcome preferences by participant risk factor expertise, we also examined and described outcome preferences among risk factor subgroups (with a combined sample of > 30 participants). These findings are discussed.

A total of 186 eligible participants completed the survey in part or in full.

Of the 186 participants, 90 primarily identified as policy-makers and 96 as public health prevention practitioners (Table  1 ). In all, 37% of participants (47% policy-makers, 27% practitioners) had over 15 years’ experience, and approximately one third (32% policy-makers, 36% practitioners) had a PhD. The most common areas of experience were nutrition and dietetics (38% policy-maker, 53% practitioner), physical activity or sedentary behaviour (46% policy-maker, 44% practitioner), obesity (49% policy-maker, 48% practitioner) and tobacco, alcohol or other drugs (51% policy-maker, 34% practitioner).

Valued outcomes

Intervention outcomes.

A total of 169 participants (83 policy-makers and 86 practitioners, with 7 and 10 missing, respectively) responded to the value-weighting questions for the 17 listed intervention outcomes. Table 2 (Fig.  2 ) reports the mean and standard deviation of points allocated by policy-makers and practitioners for each outcome, ranked in descending order to represent the most to least important. For policy-makers and practitioners combined, the effectiveness of an intervention, and its impact on equity, were clearly identified by participants as the leading two outcomes, with a mean allocation of 24.47 [standard deviation (SD) = 17.43] and 13.44(SD = 12.80), respectively. The mean scores for outcomes of feasibility (9.78) and sustainability (9.04) that ranked third and fourth, respectively, were similar; then scores dropped noticeably to 7.24 for acceptability and 5.81 for economic outcomes.

Line graph representing mean points allocated for the 17 intervention outcomes overall and by role

For most outcomes, average scores were similar for policy-makers and practitioners. However, practitioner scores for the outcome of acceptability (mean = 8.95, SD = 9.11), which ranked third most important for practitioners was significantly different than for policy-makers (mean = 5.48, SD = 9.62), where it was ranked seventh ( p  = 0.005). Economics/cost outcomes were ranked fifth by policy-makers (mean = 8.28, SD = 10.63), which significantly differed from practitioners (mean = 3.43, SD = 6.56), where it was ranked ninth ( p  = 0.002). For co-benefits, ranked eighth by policy-makers (mean = 4.37, SD = 7.78), scores were significantly different than for practitioners (mean = 2.27, SD = 6.49), where it was ranked thirteenth ( p  = 0.0215). Rankings for the top five outcomes were identical for those with expertise in nutrition and dietetics, physical activity or sedentary behaviour, obesity and tobacco, alcohol or other drugs (Additional file 1 : Table S2).

Implementation outcomes

A total of 153 participants (75 policy-makers and 78 practitioners, with 15 and 18 missing, respectively) responded to the value-weighting questions for the 16 listed implementation outcomes (Table  3 , Fig.  3 ). The effectiveness of an implementation strategy was clearly identified by participants as the most important intervention outcome, with a mean allocation of 19.82 (SD = 16.85) overall. The mean scores for the next three ranked outcomes namely equity (mean = 10.42, SD = 12.7), feasibility (mean = 10.2, SD = 12.91) and sustainability (mean = 10.08, SD = 10.58) were similar, and thereafter, scores noticeably dropped for measures of adoption (mean = 8.55, SD = 10.90), the fifth-ranked outcome.

Line graph representing mean points allocated for the 16 implementation outcomes overall and by role

For most implementation outcomes (Fig.  3 ) policy-makers and practitioners scores were similar. However, economics outcomes were ranked seventh for policy-makers with a mean = 5.58 (SD = 9.25), compared with practitioners who had a ranking of eleventh for this outcome (mean = 2.88, SD = 6.67). The difference in the points allocated were statistically significant between the two groups ( p  = 0.0439). Timeliness was ranked tenth most important for policy-makers, with a mean allocation of 4.03 (SD = 7.72), compared with practitioners who had a ranking of fourteenth for this outcome and a mean allocation of 2.05 (SD = 5.78). The difference in mean scores between policy-makers and practitioners on this outcome was not significant. Rankings and scores were similar for those with expertise in nutrition and dietetics, physical activity or sedentary behaviour, obesity and tobacco, alcohol or other drugs (Additional file 1 : Table S3).

Broadly, this study sought to better understand the information valued by public health policy-makers and practitioners to support their decisions regarding what and how interventions should be implemented in the community. The most valued research outcomes were the same regardless of whether policy-makers or practitioners were selecting interventions or implementation strategies. Namely outcomes regarding the effectiveness of interventions and implementation strategies. Following this, outcomes about equity, feasibility and sustainability also appeared to represent priorities. The study also found broad convergence among the most valued research outcomes, between policy-makers and practitioners, and across participants with expertise across different non-communicable disease (NCD) risk factors (for example, nutrition, obesity and tobacco). Such findings underscore the importance of research reporting these outcomes to support the translation of public health research into policy and practice.

For outcomes about decisions regarding intervention selection, the findings are broadly consistent with factors recommended by evidence-to-decision frameworks. For example, the top six ranked outcomes (effectiveness, equity, feasibility, sustainability, acceptability and economic), are also represented in both the WHO INTEGRATE framework [ 12 ] and the GRADE Evidence to Decision framework [ 13 ]. However, research outcomes about harms (adverse effects), which are included in both the WHO INTEGRATE and GRADE frameworks were ranked 13th by participants in this study. Such a finding was surprising given that potential benefits and harms of an intervention must be considered to appraise its net impact on patient or public health. Health professionals, however, do not have accurate expectations of the harms and benefits of therapeutic interventions. This appears particularly to be the case for public health professionals who acknowledge the potential for unintended consequences of policies [ 48 ] but consider these risks to be minimal [ 49 ]. The findings, therefore, may reflect the tendency of health professionals to overestimate the benefits of therapeutic interventions, and to a larger extent, underestimate harms [ 50 , 51 ]. In doing so, participants may have elevated their reported value of outcomes regarding the beneficial effectiveness of an intervention and discounted their value of outcomes reporting potential harms. Further research is warranted to substantiate this hypothesis, or explore whether other factors such as participant comprehension or misinterpretation of the outcome description may explain the finding. Nonetheless, the inclusion of measures of adverse effects (or harms) as trial outcomes is prudent to support evidence-informed public health decision-making, as is the use of strategies to facilitate risk communication to ensure the likelihood of such outcomes is understood by policy-makers and practitioners [ 52 , 53 , 54 ].

To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the research evidence needs of public health policy-makers and practitioners when deciding on what strategies may be used to support policy or program implementation. Most of the eight implementation outcomes recommended by Proctor and colleagues [ 14 ] were ranked within the top eight by participants of this study. However, equity outcomes, ranked second by these participants, were not an outcome included in the list of outcomes defined by Proctor and colleagues. The findings may reflect public health values, which, as a discipline, has equity at its core [ 55 ]. It may also reflect the increasing attention to issues of health equity in implementation science [ 56 ].

Further, one of the eight Proctor outcomes, penetration – defined by Proctor and colleagues as the integration or saturation of an intervention within a service setting and its subsystems – was not ranked highly. Successful penetration implies a level of organization institutionalization of an intervention, which once achieved may continue to provide ongoing benefit to patients or populations. It may also suggest the capacity within the organization to expand implementation or adopt new interventions. Penetration outcomes, therefore, have been suggested to be particularly important to model and understand the potential impact of investment of scarce health resources in the implementation of public health policies and interventions [ 57 ].

At face value, such findings may suggest, at least from the perspective of public health policy-makers and practitioners, that penetration outcomes may not be particularly valued in terms of decision-making. However, it may also reflect a lack of familiarity with this term among public health policy-makers and practitioners, where related outcomes such as “reach” are more commonly used in the literature [ 14 , 58 ]. Alternatively it may be due to the conceptual similarity of this and other outcomes such as adoption, maintenance or sustainability. In other studies, for example, penetration has been operationalized to include the product of “reach”, “adoption” and “organizational maintenance” [ 58 ]. A lack of clear conceptual distinction may have led some participants to allocate points to related outcomes such as “adoption” rather than “penetration”.

The use of concept mapping techniques, consolidation of definitions of existing outcomes, and articulation of specific measures aligned to these outcomes may reduce some of these conceptual challenges. Indeed, best practice processes to develop core outcome sets for clinical trials suggest processes of engagement with end-users [ 45 ], stakeholders and researchers to articulate both broad outcomes and specific measures of these to support a shared understanding of important outcomes (and measures) to be included in such research. For example, there are many measures and economic methods to derive related to a broad outcome of “cost” (for example, absolute costs, cost–effectiveness, cost–benefit, cost–utility, and budget impact analysis) [ 59 ]. However, public health policy-makers’ preference or perceived value of these different measures to their decision-making will likely vary. While work in the field to map or align specific measures to broad outcomes is ongoing [ 57 , 58 , 60 ], extending this to empirically investigate end-user preferences for measures would be an important contribution to the field.

Broadly speaking, there was little variation in the outcomes valued between policy-makers and practitioners. However, economic evaluations were ranked as more important by policy-makers. The findings may reflect differences in the roles of Australian public health policy-makers and practitioners. That is, government policy-makers are often responsible for setting and financing the provision of public health programs, whereas health practitioners are responsible for directly supporting or undertaking their delivery. Economic considerations, therefore, may have greater primacy among policy-makers, who may be more likely to incur program costs [ 19 ]. Further research to explore and better understand these areas of divergence is warranted.

The study intended to provide information about outcomes that were generally of most use in public health policy and practice decision-making. However, such decisions are often highly contextual, and preferences may vary depending on the policy-maker or practitioner, the health issue to be addressed, the target population or broader decision-making circumstances [ 2 , 61 ]. As such, the extent to which the findings reported in this study generalize to other contexts, such as those working in different fields of public health, on different health issues or from countries or jurisdictions outside Australia is unknown. Future research examining the outcome preferences of public health policy-makers and practitioners in different contexts, therefore, is warranted.

The contextual nature of evidence needs of policy-makers and practitioners may explain, in part, the variability in outcome preferences. In many cases, for example, the mean of the outcome preference was less than its standard deviation. The interpretation of the study findings should consider this variability. That is, there is little distinguishing the mean preference ranks of many outcomes. However, the study findings at the extremes are unambiguous, suggesting clear preferences for the highest over the lowest ranking outcomes that did not differ markedly across policy-makers, practitioners or those with expertise in addressing different non-communicable disease risks such as nutrition, physical activity or tobacco or alcohol use.

Several study limitations are worth considering when interpreting the research findings. The initial inventory of outcomes was compiled from outcome frameworks, many of which were generic health or medical research outcomes that are uncommon in public health prevention research. There was considerable overlap in the outcomes included across frameworks, though how these were defined at times varied. Variability in outcome terminology has previously been identified as a problem for the field [ 62 ]. Despite being provided definitions for each, some participants may have responded to survey items based on their pre-existing understanding of these terms. Furthermore, following completion of the study, a programming error was identified whereby the definition of “Acceptability of the implementation strategy” was incorrectly assigned as “A measure of the uptake or reach of an implementation strategy”. The extent to which this may have influenced participant preferences is unclear, so sensitivity analysis was conducted by removing all participants who selected acceptability as a measure of interest. We conducted two analyses, one where the people who chose acceptability were removed but their other rankings remained and another where all their data were deleted. Results indicated that the top five outcomes did not differ after conducting the analysis, with only sustainability moving from fourth to second place in the second sensitivity analysis (Additional file 1 : Tables S4 and S5).

The pathway from research production to research in health policy or practice is complex. While a range of effective public health policies and interventions exist across a range of community settings [ 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 ], their implementation at a level capable of achieving population-level risk reductions remains elusive [ 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 ]. Nonetheless, undertaking research with end-use in mind, including reporting of outcomes valued by decision-makers, will likely facilitate the knowledge translation process [ 7 ]. In this study we found that outcomes related to effectiveness, equity, feasibility and sustainability appear important to decisions policy-makers and practitioners make about the interventions they select and the strategies they employ to implement public health prevention initiatives. Researchers interested in supporting evidence-informed decision-making should seek to provide for these information needs and prioritize such outcomes in dissemination activities to policy-makers and practitioners.

Contribution to the literature

It is essential to the research needs of policy-makers and practitioners to determine core outcomes to facilitate research use and knowledge translation.

Here we quantify the relative values of a variety of research outcomes commonly used in health research.

Findings suggest the primary outcomes of interest to public health prevention policy-makers and practitioners when making decisions about the selection of interventions and strategies to implement them are related to effectiveness, equity, feasibility and sustainability and that these do not differ markedly between public health prevention policy-makers and practitioners.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health

Health Promotion Journal of Australia

Intervention scalability assessment tool

Non-communicable disease

National Centre of Implementation Science

Public Health Research and Practice

World Health Organization

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This study was funded in part by a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Centre for Research Excellence – National Centre of Implementation Science (NCOIS) Grant (APP1153479) and a New South Wales (NSW) Cancer Council Program Grant (G1500708). LW is supported by an NHMRC Investigator Grant (G1901360).

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LW and SMc led the conception and design of the study, were closely involved in data analysis and interpretation and wrote the manuscript. AH, AB, AM and RH comprised the study advisory committee, reviewed the study’s methods and assisted with survey development. AH was responsible for data analysis. KM and EW assisted with survey development, data collection and preliminary analysis. AH, AB, AM, RH, SY and RS were involved in interpretation and revised the manuscript critically for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Additional file 1:.

Table S1. Mean point allocations for each of the 17 intervention outcomes overall and by area of expertise (where field of expertise n ≥ 30). Table S2. Mean point allocations for each of the 16 implementation outcomes overall and by area of expertise (where field of expertise n ≥ 30). Table S3. Mean points for implementation outcomes overall and by area of expertise (field of expertise n ≥ 30). Table S4. Sensitivity analysis, participants who selected ‘acceptability’ removed from the analysis, their other rankings remained. Table S5. Sensitivity analysis, participants who selected ‘acceptability’ whole data set removed from the analysis.

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Wolfenden, L., Hall, A., Bauman, A. et al. Research outcomes informing the selection of public health interventions and strategies to implement them: A cross-sectional survey of Australian policy-maker and practitioner preferences. Health Res Policy Sys 22 , 58 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-024-01144-4

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Exploring the dynamics of consumer engagement in social media influencer marketing: from the self-determination theory perspective

• Chenyu Gu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6059-0573 1 &
• Qiuting Duan 2  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  587 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Influencer advertising has emerged as an integral part of social media marketing. Within this realm, consumer engagement is a critical indicator for gauging the impact of influencer advertisements, as it encompasses the proactive involvement of consumers in spreading advertisements and creating value. Therefore, investigating the mechanisms behind consumer engagement holds significant relevance for formulating effective influencer advertising strategies. The current study, grounded in self-determination theory and employing a stimulus-organism-response framework, constructs a general model to assess the impact of influencer factors, advertisement information, and social factors on consumer engagement. Analyzing data from 522 samples using structural equation modeling, the findings reveal: (1) Social media influencers are effective at generating initial online traffic but have limited influence on deeper levels of consumer engagement, cautioning advertisers against overestimating their impact; (2) The essence of higher-level engagement lies in the ad information factor, affirming that in the new media era, content remains ‘king’; (3) Interpersonal factors should also be given importance, as influencing the surrounding social groups of consumers is one of the effective ways to enhance the impact of advertising. Theoretically, current research broadens the scope of both social media and advertising effectiveness studies, forming a bridge between influencer marketing and consumer engagement. Practically, the findings offer macro-level strategic insights for influencer marketing.

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Introduction.

Recent studies have highlighted an escalating aversion among audiences towards traditional online ads, leading to a diminishing effectiveness of traditional online advertising methods (Lou et al., 2019 ). In an effort to overcome these challenges, an increasing number of brands are turning to influencers as their spokespersons for advertising. Utilizing influencers not only capitalizes on their significant influence over their fan base but also allows for the dissemination of advertising messages in a more native and organic manner. Consequently, influencer-endorsed advertising has become a pivotal component and a growing trend in social media advertising (Gräve & Bartsch, 2022 ). Although the topic of influencer-endorsed advertising has garnered increasing attention from scholars, the field is still in its infancy, offering ample opportunities for in-depth research and exploration (Barta et al., 2023 ).

Presently, social media influencers—individuals with substantial follower bases—have emerged as the new vanguard in advertising (Hudders & Lou, 2023 ). Their tweets and videos possess the remarkable potential to sway the purchasing decisions of thousands if not millions. This influence largely hinges on consumer engagement behaviors, implying that the impact of advertising can proliferate throughout a consumer’s entire social network (Abbasi et al., 2023 ). Consequently, exploring ways to enhance consumer engagement is of paramount theoretical and practical significance for advertising effectiveness research (Xiao et al., 2023 ). This necessitates researchers to delve deeper into the exploration of the stimulating factors and psychological mechanisms influencing consumer engagement behaviors (Vander Schee et al., 2020 ), which is the gap this study seeks to address.

The Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework has been extensively applied in the study of consumer engagement behaviors (Tak & Gupta, 2021 ) and has been shown to integrate effectively with self-determination theory (Yang et al., 2019 ). Therefore, employing the S-O-R framework to investigate consumer engagement behaviors in the context of influencer advertising is considered a rational approach. The current study embarks on an in-depth analysis of the transformation process from three distinct dimensions. In the Stimulus (S) phase, we focus on how influencer factors, advertising message factors, and social influence factors act as external stimuli. This phase scrutinizes the external environment’s role in triggering consumer reactions. During the Organism (O) phase, the research explores the intrinsic psychological motivations affecting individual behavior as posited in self-determination theory. This includes the willingness for self-disclosure, the desire for innovation, and trust in advertising messages. The investigation in this phase aims to understand how these internal motivations shape consumer attitudes and perceptions in the context of influencer marketing. Finally, in the Response (R) phase, the study examines how these psychological factors influence consumer engagement behavior. This part of the research seeks to understand the transition from internal psychological states to actual consumer behavior, particularly how these states drive the consumers’ deep integration and interaction with the influencer content.

Despite the inherent limitations of cross-sectional analysis in capturing the full temporal dynamics of consumer engagement, this study seeks to unveil the dynamic interplay between consumers’ psychological needs—autonomy, competence, and relatedness—and their varying engagement levels in social media influencer marketing, grounded in self-determination theory. Through this lens, by analyzing factors related to influencers, content, and social context, we aim to infer potential dynamic shifts in engagement behaviors as psychological needs evolve. This approach allows us to offer a snapshot of the complex, multi-dimensional nature of consumer engagement dynamics, providing valuable insights for both theoretical exploration and practical application in the constantly evolving domain of social media marketing. Moreover, the current study underscores the significance of adapting to the dynamic digital environment and highlights the evolving nature of consumer engagement in the realm of digital marketing.

Literature review

Stimulus-organism-response (s-o-r) model.

The Stimulus-Response (S-R) model, originating from behaviorist psychology and introduced by psychologist Watson ( 1917 ), posits that individual behaviors are directly induced by external environmental stimuli. However, this model overlooks internal personal factors, complicating the explanation of psychological states. Mehrabian and Russell ( 1974 ) expanded this by incorporating the individual’s cognitive component (organism) into the model, creating the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework. This model has become a crucial theoretical framework in consumer psychology as it interprets internal psychological cognitions as mediators between stimuli and responses. Integrating with psychological theories, the S-O-R model effectively analyzes and explains the significant impact of internal psychological factors on behavior (Koay et al., 2020 ; Zhang et al., 2021 ), and is extensively applied in investigating user behavior on social media platforms (Hewei & Youngsook, 2022 ). This study combines the S-O-R framework with self-determination theory to examine consumer engagement behaviors in the context of social media influencer advertising, a logic also supported by some studies (Yang et al., 2021 ).

Self-determination theory

Self-determination theory, proposed by Richard and Edward (2000), is a theoretical framework exploring human behavioral motivation and personality. The theory emphasizes motivational processes, positing that individual behaviors are developed based on factors satisfying their psychological needs. It suggests that individual behavioral tendencies are influenced by the needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy. Furthermore, self-determination theory, along with organic integration theory, indicates that individual behavioral tendencies are also affected by internal psychological motivations and external situational factors.

Self-determination theory has been validated by scholars in the study of online user behaviors. For example, Sweet applied the theory to the investigation of community building in online networks, analyzing knowledge-sharing behaviors among online community members (Sweet et al., 2020 ). Further literature review reveals the applicability of self-determination theory to consumer engagement behaviors, particularly in the context of influencer marketing advertisements. Firstly, self-determination theory is widely applied in studying the psychological motivations behind online behaviors, suggesting that the internal and external motivations outlined within the theory might also apply to exploring consumer behaviors in influencer marketing scenarios (Itani et al., 2022 ). Secondly, although research on consumer engagement in the social media influencer advertising context is still in its early stages, some studies have utilized SDT to explore behaviors such as information sharing and electronic word-of-mouth dissemination (Astuti & Hariyawan, 2021 ). These behaviors, which are part of the content contribution and creation dimensions of consumer engagement, may share similarities in the underlying psychological motivational mechanisms. Thus, this study will build upon these foundations to construct the Organism (O) component of the S-O-R model, integrating insights from SDT to further understand consumer engagement in influencer marketing.

Consumer engagement

Although scholars generally agree at a macro level to define consumer engagement as the creation of additional value by consumers or customers beyond purchasing products, the specific categorization of consumer engagement varies in different studies. For instance, Simon and Tossan interpret consumer engagement as a psychological willingness to interact with influencers (Simon & Tossan, 2018 ). However, such a broad definition lacks precision in describing various levels of engagement. Other scholars directly use tangible metrics on social media platforms, such as likes, saves, comments, and shares, to represent consumer engagement (Lee et al., 2018 ). While this quantitative approach is not flawed and can be highly effective in practical applications, it overlooks the content aspect of engagement, contradicting the “content is king” principle of advertising and marketing. We advocate for combining consumer engagement with the content aspect, as content engagement not only generates more traces of consumer online behavior (Oestreicher-Singer & Zalmanson, 2013 ) but, more importantly, content contribution and creation are central to social media advertising and marketing, going beyond mere content consumption (Qiu & Kumar, 2017 ). Meanwhile, we also need to emphasize that engagement is not a fixed state but a fluctuating process influenced by ongoing interactions between consumers and influencers, mediated by the evolving nature of social media platforms and the shifting sands of consumer preferences (Pradhan et al., 2023 ). Consumer engagement in digital environments undergoes continuous change, reflecting a journey rather than a destination (Viswanathan et al., 2017 ).

The current study adopts a widely accepted definition of consumer engagement from existing research, offering operational feasibility and aligning well with the research objectives of this paper. Consumer engagement behaviors in the context of this study encompass three dimensions: content consumption, content contribution, and content creation (Muntinga et al., 2011 ). These dimensions reflect a spectrum of digital engagement behaviors ranging from low to high levels (Schivinski et al., 2016 ). Specifically, content consumption on social media platforms represents a lower level of engagement, where consumers merely click and read the information but do not actively contribute or create user-generated content. Some studies consider this level of engagement as less significant for in-depth exploration because content consumption, compared to other forms, generates fewer visible traces of consumer behavior (Brodie et al., 2013 ). Even in a study by Qiu and Kumar, it was noted that the conversion rate of content consumption is low, contributing minimally to the success of social media marketing (Qiu & Kumar, 2017 ).

On the other hand, content contribution, especially content creation, is central to social media marketing. When consumers comment on influencer content or share information with their network nodes, it is termed content contribution, representing a medium level of online consumer engagement (Piehler et al., 2019 ). Furthermore, when consumers actively upload and post brand-related content on social media, this higher level of behavior is referred to as content creation. Content creation represents the highest level of consumer engagement (Cheung et al., 2021 ). Although medium and high levels of consumer engagement are more valuable for social media advertising and marketing, this exploratory study still retains the content consumption dimension of consumer engagement behaviors.

Theoretical framework

Internal organism factors: self-disclosure willingness, innovativeness, and information trust.

In existing research based on self-determination theory that focuses on online behavior, competence, relatedness, and autonomy are commonly considered as internal factors influencing users’ online behaviors. However, this approach sometimes strays from the context of online consumption. Therefore, in studies related to online consumption, scholars often use self-disclosure willingness as an overt representation of autonomy, innovativeness as a representation of competence, and trust as a representation of relatedness (Mahmood et al., 2019 ).

The use of these overt variables can be logically explained as follows: According to self-determination theory, individuals with a higher level of self-determination are more likely to adopt compensatory mechanisms to facilitate behavior compared to those with lower self-determination (Wehmeyer, 1999 ). Self-disclosure, a voluntary act of sharing personal information with others, is considered a key behavior in the development of interpersonal relationships. In social environments, self-disclosure can effectively alleviate stress and build social connections, while also seeking societal validation of personal ideas (Altman & Taylor, 1973 ). Social networks, as para-social entities, possess the interactive attributes of real societies and are likely to exhibit similar mechanisms. In consumer contexts, personal disclosures can include voluntary sharing of product interests, consumption experiences, and future purchase intentions (Robertshaw & Marr, 2006 ). While material incentives can prompt personal information disclosure, many consumers disclose personal information online voluntarily, which can be traced back to an intrinsic need for autonomy (Stutzman et al., 2011 ). Thus, in this study, we consider the self-disclosure willingness as a representation of high autonomy.

Innovativeness refers to an individual’s internal level of seeking novelty and represents their personality and tendency for novelty (Okazaki, 2009 ). Often used in consumer research, innovative consumers are inclined to try new technologies and possess an intrinsic motivation to use new products. Previous studies have shown that consumers with high innovativeness are more likely to search for information on new products and share their experiences and expertise with others, reflecting a recognition of their own competence (Kaushik & Rahman, 2014 ). Therefore, in consumer contexts, innovativeness is often regarded as the competence dimension within the intrinsic factors of self-determination (Wang et al., 2016 ), with external motivations like information novelty enhancing this intrinsic motivation (Lee et al., 2015 ).

Trust refers to an individual’s willingness to rely on the opinions of others they believe in. From a social psychological perspective, trust indicates the willingness to assume the risk of being harmed by another party (McAllister, 1995 ). Widely applied in social media contexts for relational marketing, information trust has been proven to positively influence the exchange and dissemination of consumer information, representing a close and advanced relationship between consumers and businesses, brands, or advertising endorsers (Steinhoff et al., 2019 ). Consumers who trust brands or social media influencers are more willing to share information without fear of exploitation (Pop et al., 2022 ), making trust a commonly used representation of the relatedness dimension in self-determination within consumer contexts.

Construction of the path from organism to response: self-determination internal factors and consumer engagement behavior

Following the logic outlined above, the current study represents the internal factors of self-determination theory through three variables: self-disclosure willingness, innovativeness, and information trust. Next, the study explores the association between these self-determination internal factors and consumer engagement behavior, thereby constructing the link between Organism (O) and Response (R).

Self-disclosure willingness and consumer engagement behavior

In the realm of social sciences, the concept of self-disclosure willingness has been thoroughly examined from diverse disciplinary perspectives, encompassing communication studies, sociology, and psychology. Viewing from the lens of social interaction dynamics, self-disclosure is acknowledged as a fundamental precondition for the initiation and development of online social relationships and interactive engagements (Luo & Hancock, 2020 ). It constitutes an indispensable component within the spectrum of interactive behaviors and the evolution of interpersonal connections. Voluntary self-disclosure is characterized by individuals divulging information about themselves, which typically remains unknown to others and is inaccessible through alternative sources. This concept aligns with the tenets of uncertainty reduction theory, which argues that during interpersonal engagements, individuals seek information about their counterparts as a means to mitigate uncertainties inherent in social interactions (Lee et al., 2008 ). Self-disclosure allows others to gain more personal information, thereby helping to reduce the uncertainty in interpersonal relationships. Such disclosure is voluntary rather than coerced, and this sharing of information can facilitate the development of relationships between individuals (Towner et al., 2022 ). Furthermore, individuals who actively engage in social media interactions (such as liking, sharing, and commenting on others’ content) often exhibit higher levels of self-disclosure (Chu et al., 2023 ); additional research indicates a positive correlation between self-disclosure and online engagement behaviors (Lee et al., 2023 ). Taking the context of the current study, the autonomous self-disclosure willingness can incline social media users to read advertising content more attentively and share information with others, and even create evaluative content. Therefore, this paper proposes the following research hypothesis:

H1a: The self-disclosure willingness is positively correlated with content consumption in consumer engagement behavior.

H1b: The self-disclosure willingness is positively correlated with content contribution in consumer engagement behavior.

H1c: The self-disclosure willingness is positively correlated with content creation in consumer engagement behavior.

Innovativeness and consumer engagement behavior

Innovativeness represents an individual’s propensity to favor new technologies and the motivation to use new products, associated with the cognitive perception of one’s self-competence. Individuals with a need for self-competence recognition often exhibit higher innovativeness (Kelley & Alden, 2016 ). Existing research indicates that users with higher levels of innovativeness are more inclined to accept new product information and share their experiences and discoveries with others in their social networks (Yusuf & Busalim, 2018 ). Similarly, in the context of this study, individuals, as followers of influencers, signify an endorsement of the influencer. Driven by innovativeness, they may be more eager to actively receive information from influencers. If they find the information valuable, they are likely to share it and even engage in active content re-creation to meet their expectations of self-image. Therefore, this paper proposes the following research hypotheses:

H2a: The innovativeness of social media users is positively correlated with content consumption in consumer engagement behavior.

H2b: The innovativeness of social media users is positively correlated with content contribution in consumer engagement behavior.

H2c: The innovativeness of social media users is positively correlated with content creation in consumer engagement behavior.

Information trust and consumer engagement

Trust refers to an individual’s willingness to rely on the statements and opinions of a target object (Moorman et al., 1993 ). Extensive research indicates that trust positively impacts information dissemination and content sharing in interpersonal communication environments (Majerczak & Strzelecki, 2022 ); when trust is established, individuals are more willing to share their resources and less suspicious of being exploited. Trust has also been shown to influence consumers’ participation in community building and content sharing on social media, demonstrating cross-cultural universality (Anaya-Sánchez et al., 2020 ).

Trust in influencer advertising information is also a key predictor of consumers’ information exchange online. With many social media users now operating under real-name policies, there is an increased inclination to trust information shared on social media over that posted by corporate accounts or anonymously. Additionally, as users’ social networks partially overlap with their real-life interpersonal networks, extensive research shows that more consumers increasingly rely on information posted and shared on social networks when making purchase decisions (Wang et al., 2016 ). This aligns with the effectiveness goals of influencer marketing advertisements and the characteristics of consumer engagement. Trust in the content posted by influencers is considered a manifestation of a strong relationship between fans and influencers, central to relationship marketing (Kim & Kim, 2021 ). Based on trust in the influencer, which then extends to trust in their content, people are more inclined to browse information posted by influencers, share this information with others, and even create their own content without fear of exploitation or negative consequences. Therefore, this paper proposes the following research hypotheses:

H3a: Information trust is positively correlated with content consumption in consumer engagement behavior.

H3b: Information trust is positively correlated with content contribution in consumer engagement behavior.

H3c: Information trust is positively correlated with content creation in consumer engagement behavior.

Construction of the path from stimulus to organism: influencer factors, advertising information factors, social factors, and self-determination internal factors

Having established the logical connection from Organism (O) to Response (R), we further construct the influence path from Stimulus (S) to Organism (O). Revisiting the definition of influencer advertising in social media, companies, and brands leverage influencers on social media platforms to disseminate advertising content, utilizing the influencers’ relationships and influence over consumers for marketing purposes. In addition to consumer’s internal factors, elements such as companies, brands, influencers, and the advertisements themselves also impact consumer behavior. Although factors like the brand image perception of companies may influence consumer behavior, considering that in influencer marketing, companies and brands do not directly interact with consumers, this study prioritizes the dimensions of influencers and advertisements. Furthermore, the impact of social factors on individual cognition and behavior is significant, thus, the current study integrates influencers, advertisements, and social dimensions as the Stimulus (S) component.

Influencer factors: parasocial identification

Self-determination theory posits that relationships are one of the key motivators influencing individual behavior. In the context of social media research, users anticipate establishing a parasocial relationship with influencers, resembling real-life relationships. Hence, we consider the parasocial identification arising from users’ parasocial interactions with influencers as the relational motivator. Parasocial interaction refers to the one-sided personal relationship that individuals develop with media characters (Donald & Richard, 1956 ). During this process, individuals believe that the media character is directly communicating with them, creating a sense of positive intimacy (Giles, 2002 ). Over time, through repeated unilateral interactions with media characters, individuals develop a parasocial relationship, leading to parasocial identification. However, parasocial identification should not be directly equated with the concept of social identification in social identity theory. Social identification occurs when individuals psychologically de-individualize themselves, perceiving the characteristics of their social group as their own, upon identifying themselves as part of that group. In contrast, parasocial identification refers to the one-sided interactional identification with media characters (such as celebrities or influencers) over time (Chen et al., 2021 ). Particularly when individuals’ needs for interpersonal interaction are not met in their daily lives, they turn to parasocial interactions to fulfill these needs (Shan et al., 2020 ). Especially on social media, which is characterized by its high visibility and interactivity, users can easily develop a strong parasocial identification with the influencers they follow (Wei et al., 2022 ).

Parasocial identification and self-disclosure willingness

Theories like uncertainty reduction, personal construct, and social exchange are often applied to explain the emergence of parasocial identification. Social media, with its convenient and interactive modes of information dissemination, enables consumers to easily follow influencers on media platforms. They can perceive the personality of influencers through their online content, viewing them as familiar individuals or even friends. Once parasocial identification develops, this pleasurable experience can significantly influence consumers’ cognitions and thus their behavioral responses. Research has explored the impact of parasocial identification on consumer behavior. For instance, Bond et al. found that on Twitter, the intensity of users’ parasocial identification with influencers positively correlates with their continuous monitoring of these influencers’ activities (Bond, 2016 ). Analogous to real life, where we tend to pay more attention to our friends in our social networks, a similar phenomenon occurs in the relationship between consumers and brands. This type of parasocial identification not only makes consumers willing to follow brand pages but also more inclined to voluntarily provide personal information (Chen et al., 2021 ). Based on this logic, we speculate that a similar relationship may exist between social media influencers and their fans. Fans develop parasocial identification with influencers through social media interactions, making them more willing to disclose their information, opinions, and views in the comment sections of the influencers they follow, engaging in more frequent social interactions (Chung & Cho, 2017 ), even if the content at times may be brand or company-embedded marketing advertisements. In other words, in the presence of influencers with whom they have established parasocial relationships, they are more inclined to disclose personal information, thereby promoting consumer engagement behavior. Therefore, we propose the following research hypotheses:

H4: Parasocial identification is positively correlated with consumer self-disclosure willingness.

H4a: Self-disclosure willingness mediates the impact of parasocial identification on content consumption in consumer engagement behavior.

H4b: Self-disclosure willingness mediates the impact of parasocial identification on content contribution in consumer engagement behavior.

H4c: Self-disclosure willingness mediates the impact of parasocial identification on content creation in consumer engagement behavior.

Parasocial identification and information trust

Information Trust refers to consumers’ willingness to trust the information contained in advertisements and to place themselves at risk. These risks include purchasing products inconsistent with the advertised information and the negative social consequences of erroneously spreading this information to others, leading to unpleasant consumption experiences (Minton, 2015 ). In advertising marketing, gaining consumers’ trust in advertising information is crucial. In the context of influencer marketing on social media, companies, and brands leverage the social connection between influencers and their fans. According to cognitive empathy theory, consumers project their trust in influencers onto the products endorsed, explaining the phenomenon of ‘loving the house for the crow on its roof.’ Research indicates that parasocial identification with influencers is a necessary condition for trust development. Consumers engage in parasocial interactions with influencers on social media, leading to parasocial identification (Jin et al., 2021 ). Consumers tend to reduce their cognitive load and simplify their decision-making processes, thus naturally adopting a positive attitude and trust towards advertising information disseminated by influencers with whom they have established parasocial identification. This forms the core logic behind the success of influencer marketing advertisements (Breves et al., 2021 ); furthermore, as mentioned earlier, because consumers trust these advertisements, they are also willing to share this information with friends and family and even engage in content re-creation. Therefore, we propose the following research hypotheses:

H5: Parasocial identification is positively correlated with information trust.

H5a: Information trust mediates the impact of parasocial identification on content consumption in consumer engagement behavior.

H5b: Information trust mediates the impact of parasocial identification on content contribution in consumer engagement behavior.

H5c: Information trust mediates the impact of parasocial identification on content creation in consumer engagement behavior.

Influencer factors: source credibility

Source credibility refers to the degree of trust consumers place in the influencer as a source, based on the influencer’s reliability and expertise. Numerous studies have validated the effectiveness of the endorsement effect in advertising (Schouten et al., 2021 ). The Source Credibility Model, proposed by the renowned American communication scholar Hovland and the “Yale School,” posits that in the process of information dissemination, the credibility of the source can influence the audience’s decision to accept the information. The credibility of the information is determined by two aspects of the source: reliability and expertise. Reliability refers to the audience’s trust in the “communicator’s objective and honest approach to providing information,” while expertise refers to the audience’s trust in the “communicator being perceived as an effective source of information” (Hovland et al., 1953 ). Hovland’s definitions reveal that the interpretation of source credibility is not about the inherent traits of the source itself but rather the audience’s perception of the source (Jang et al., 2021 ). This differs from trust and serves as a precursor to the development of trust. Specifically, reliability and expertise are based on the audience’s perception; thus, this aligns closely with the audience’s perception of influencers (Kim & Kim, 2021 ). This credibility is a cognitive statement about the source of information.

Source credibility and self-disclosure willingness

Some studies have confirmed the positive impact of an influencer’s self-disclosure on their credibility as a source (Leite & Baptista, 2022 ). However, few have explored the impact of an influencer’s credibility, as a source, on consumers’ self-disclosure willingness. Undoubtedly, an impact exists; self-disclosure is considered a method to attempt to increase intimacy with others (Leite et al., 2022 ). According to social exchange theory, people promote relationships through the exchange of information in interpersonal communication to gain benefits (Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2005 ). Credibility, deriving from an influencer’s expertise and reliability, means that a highly credible influencer may provide more valuable information to consumers. Therefore, based on the social exchange theory’s logic of reciprocal benefits, consumers might be more willing to disclose their information to trustworthy influencers, potentially even expanding social interactions through further consumer engagement behaviors. Thus, we propose the following research hypotheses:

H6: Source credibility is positively correlated with self-disclosure willingness.

H6a: Self-disclosure willingness mediates the impact of Source credibility on content consumption in consumer engagement behavior.

H6b: Self-disclosure willingness mediates the impact of Source credibility on content contribution in consumer engagement behavior.

H6c: Self-disclosure willingness mediates the impact of Source credibility on content creation in consumer engagement behavior.

Source credibility and information trust

Based on the Source Credibility Model, the credibility of an endorser as an information source can significantly influence consumers’ acceptance of the information (Shan et al., 2020 ). Existing research has demonstrated the positive impact of source credibility on consumers. Djafarova, in a study based on Instagram, noted through in-depth interviews with 18 users that an influencer’s credibility significantly affects respondents’ trust in the information they post. This credibility is composed of expertise and relevance to consumers, and influencers on social media are considered more trustworthy than traditional celebrities (Djafarova & Rushworth, 2017 ). Subsequently, Bao and colleagues validated in the Chinese consumer context, based on the ELM model and commitment-trust theory, that the credibility of brand pages on Weibo effectively fosters consumer trust in the brand, encouraging participation in marketing activities (Bao & Wang, 2021 ). Moreover, Hsieh et al. found that in e-commerce contexts, the credibility of the source is a significant factor influencing consumers’ trust in advertising information (Hsieh & Li, 2020 ). In summary, existing research has proven that the credibility of the source can promote consumer trust. Influencer credibility is a significant antecedent affecting consumers’ trust in the advertised content they publish. In brand communities, trust can foster consumer engagement behaviors (Habibi et al., 2014 ). Specifically, consumers are more likely to trust the advertising content published by influencers with higher credibility (more expertise and reliability), and as previously mentioned, consumer engagement behavior is more likely to occur. Based on this, the study proposes the following research hypotheses:

H7: Source credibility is positively correlated with information trust.

H7a: Information trust mediates the impact of source credibility on content consumption in consumer engagement behavior.

H7b: Information trust mediates the impact of source credibility on content contribution in consumer engagement behavior.

H7c: Information trust mediates the impact of source credibility on content creation in consumer engagement behavior.

Advertising information factors: informative value

Advertising value refers to “the relative utility value of advertising information to consumers and is a subjective evaluation by consumers.” In his research, Ducoffe pointed out that in the context of online advertising, the informative value of advertising is a significant component of advertising value (Ducoffe, 1995 ). Subsequent studies have proven that consumers’ perception of advertising value can effectively promote their behavioral response to advertisements (Van-Tien Dao et al., 2014 ). Informative value of advertising refers to “the information about products needed by consumers provided by the advertisement and its ability to enhance consumer purchase satisfaction.” From the perspective of information dissemination, valuable advertising information should help consumers make better purchasing decisions and reduce the effort spent searching for product information. The informational aspect of advertising has been proven to effectively influence consumers’ cognition and, in turn, their behavior (Haida & Rahim, 2015 ).

Informative value and innovativeness

As previously discussed, consumers’ innovativeness refers to their psychological trait of favoring new things. Studies have shown that consumers with high innovativeness prefer novel and valuable product information, as it satisfies their need for newness and information about new products, making it an important factor in social media advertising engagement (Shi, 2018 ). This paper also hypothesizes that advertisements with high informative value can activate consumers’ innovativeness, as the novelty of information is one of the measures of informative value (León et al., 2009 ). Acquiring valuable information can make individuals feel good about themselves and fulfill their perception of a “novel image.” According to social exchange theory, consumers can gain social capital in interpersonal interactions (such as social recognition) by sharing information about these new products they perceive as valuable. Therefore, the current study proposes the following research hypothesis:

H8: Informative value is positively correlated with innovativeness.

H8a: Innovativeness mediates the impact of informative value on content consumption in consumer engagement behavior.

H8b: Innovativeness mediates the impact of informative value on content contribution in consumer engagement behavior.

H8c: Innovativeness mediates the impact of informative value on content creation in consumer engagement behavior.

Informative value and information trust

Trust is a multi-layered concept explored across various disciplines, including communication, marketing, sociology, and psychology. For the purposes of this paper, a deep analysis of different levels of trust is not undertaken. Here, trust specifically refers to the trust in influencer advertising information within the context of social media marketing, denoting consumers’ belief in and reliance on the advertising information endorsed by influencers. Racherla et al. investigated the factors influencing consumers’ trust in online reviews, suggesting that information quality and value contribute to increasing trust (Racherla et al., 2012 ). Similarly, Luo and Yuan, in a study based on social media marketing, also confirmed that the value of advertising information posted on brand pages can foster consumer trust in the content (Lou & Yuan, 2019 ). Therefore, by analogy, this paper posits that the informative value of influencer-endorsed advertising can also promote consumer trust in that advertising information. The relationship between trust in advertising information and consumer engagement behavior has been discussed earlier. Thus, the current study proposes the following research hypotheses:

H9: Informative value is positively correlated with information trust.

H9a: Information trust mediates the impact of informative value on content consumption in consumer engagement behavior.

H9b: Information trust mediates the impact of informative value on content contribution in consumer engagement behavior.

H9c: Information trust mediates the impact of informative value on content creation in consumer engagement behavior.

Advertising information factors: ad targeting accuracy

Ad targeting accuracy refers to the degree of match between the substantive information contained in advertising content and consumer needs. Advertisements containing precise information often yield good advertising outcomes. In marketing practice, advertisers frequently use information technology to analyze the characteristics of different consumer groups in the target market and then target their advertisements accordingly to achieve precise dissemination and, consequently, effective advertising results. The utility of ad targeting accuracy has been confirmed by many studies. For instance, in the research by Qiu and Chen, using a modified UTAUT model, it was demonstrated that the accuracy of advertising effectively promotes consumer acceptance of advertisements in WeChat Moments (Qiu & Chen, 2018 ). Although some studies on targeted advertising also indicate that overly precise ads may raise concerns about personal privacy (Zhang et al., 2019 ), overall, the accuracy of advertising information is effective in enhancing advertising outcomes and is a key element in the success of targeted advertising.

Ad targeting accuracy and information trust

In influencer marketing advertisements, due to the special relationship recognition between consumers and influencers, the privacy concerns associated with ad targeting accuracy are alleviated (Vrontis et al., 2021 ). Meanwhile, the informative value brought by targeting accuracy is highlighted. More precise advertising content implies higher informative value and also signifies that the advertising content is more worthy of consumer trust (Della Vigna, Gentzkow, 2010 ). As previously discussed, people are more inclined to read and engage with advertising content they trust and recognize. Therefore, the current study proposes the following research hypotheses:

H10: Ad targeting accuracy is positively correlated with information trust.

H10a: Information trust mediates the impact of ad targeting accuracy on content consumption in consumer engagement behavior.

H10b: Information trust mediates the impact of ad targeting accuracy on content contribution in consumer engagement behavior.

H10c: Information trust mediates the impact of ad targeting accuracy on content creation in consumer engagement behavior.

Social factors: subjective norm

The Theory of Planned Behavior, proposed by Ajzen ( 1991 ), suggests that individuals’ actions are preceded by conscious choices and are underlain by plans. TPB has been widely used by scholars in studying personal online behaviors, these studies collectively validate the applicability of TPB in the context of social media for researching online behaviors (Huang, 2023 ). Additionally, the self-determination theory, which underpins this chapter’s research, also supports the notion that individuals’ behavioral decisions are based on internal cognitions, aligning with TPB’s assertions. Therefore, this paper intends to select subjective norms from TPB as a factor of social influence. Subjective norm refers to an individual’s perception of the expectations of significant others in their social relationships regarding their behavior. Empirical research in the consumption field has demonstrated the significant impact of subjective norms on individual psychological cognition (Yang & Jolly, 2009 ). A meta-analysis by Hagger, Chatzisarantis ( 2009 ) even highlighted the statistically significant association between subjective norms and self-determination factors. Consequently, this study further explores its application in the context of influencer marketing advertisements on social media.

Subjective norm and self-disclosure willingness

In numerous studies on social media privacy, subjective norms significantly influence an individual’s self-disclosure willingness. Wirth et al. ( 2019 ) based on the privacy calculus theory, surveyed 1,466 participants and found that personal self-disclosure on social media is influenced by the behavioral expectations of other significant reference groups around them. Their research confirmed that subjective norms positively influence self-disclosure of information and highlighted that individuals’ cognitions and behaviors cannot ignore social and environmental factors. Heirman et al. ( 2013 ) in an experiment with Instagram users, also noted that subjective norms could promote positive consumer behavioral responses. Specifically, when important family members and friends highly regard social media influencers as trustworthy, we may also be more inclined to disclose our information to influencers and share this information with our surrounding family and friends without fear of disapproval. In our subjective norms, this is considered a positive and valuable interactive behavior, leading us to exhibit engagement behaviors. Based on this logic, we propose the following research hypotheses:

H11: Subjective norms are positively correlated with self-disclosure willingness.

H11a: Self-disclosure willingness mediates the impact of subjective norms on content consumption in consumer engagement behavior.

H11b: Self-disclosure willingness mediates the impact of subjective norms on content contribution in consumer engagement behavior.

H11c: Self-disclosure willingness mediates the impact of subjective norms on content creation in consumer engagement behavior.

Subjective norm and information trust

Numerous studies have indicated that subjective norms significantly influence trust (Roh et al., 2022 ). This can be explained by reference group theory, suggesting people tend to minimize the effort expended in decision-making processes, often looking to the behaviors or attitudes of others as a point of reference; for instance, subjective norms can foster acceptance of technology by enhancing trust (Gupta et al., 2021 ). Analogously, if a consumer’s social network generally holds positive attitudes toward influencer advertising, they are also more likely to trust the endorsed advertisement information, as it conserves the extensive effort required in gathering product information (Chetioui et al., 2020 ). Therefore, this paper proposes the following research hypotheses:

H12: Subjective norms are positively correlated with information trust.

H12a: Information trust mediates the impact of subjective norms on content consumption in consumer engagement behavior.

H12b: Information trust mediates the impact of subjective norms on content contribution in consumer engagement behavior.

H12c: Information trust mediates the impact of subjective norms on content creation in consumer engagement behavior.

Conceptual model

In summary, based on the Stimulus (S)-Organism (O)-Response (R) framework, this study constructs the external stimulus factors (S) from three dimensions: influencer factors (parasocial identification, source credibility), advertising information factors (informative value, Ad targeting accuracy), and social influence factors (subjective norms). This is grounded in social capital theory and the theory of planned behavior. drawing on self-determination theory, the current study constructs the individual psychological factors (O) using self-disclosure willingness, innovativeness, and information trust. Finally, the behavioral response (R) is constructed using consumer engagement, which includes content consumption, content contribution, and content creation, as illustrated in Fig. 1 .

Consumer engagement behavior impact model based on SOR framework.

Materials and methods

Participants and procedures.

The current study conducted a survey through the Wenjuanxing platform to collect data. Participants were recruited through social media platforms such as WeChat, Douyin, Weibo et al., as samples drawn from social media users better align with the research purpose of our research and ensure the validity of the sample. Before the survey commenced, all participants were explicitly informed about the purpose of this study, and it was made clear that volunteers could withdraw from the survey at any time. Initially, 600 questionnaires were collected, with 78 invalid responses excluded. The criteria for valid questionnaires were as follows: (1) Respondents must have answered “Yes” to the question, “Do you follow any influencers (internet celebrities) on social media platforms?” as samples not using social media or not following influencers do not meet the study’s objective, making this question a prerequisite for continuing the survey; (2) Respondents had to correctly answer two hidden screening questions within the questionnaire to ensure that they did not randomly select scores; (3) The total time taken to complete the questionnaire had to exceed one minute, ensuring that respondents had sufficient time to understand and thoughtfully answer each question; (4) Respondents were not allowed to choose the same score for eight consecutive questions. Ultimately, 522 valid questionnaires were obtained, with an effective rate of 87.00%, meeting the basic sample size requirements for research models (Gefen et al., 2011 ). Detailed demographic information of the study participants is presented in Table 1 .

Measurements

To ensure the validity and reliability of the data analysis results in this study, the measurement tools and scales used in this chapter were designed with reference to existing established research. The main variables in the survey questionnaire include parasocial identification, source credibility, informative value, ad targeting accuracy, subjective norms, self-disclosure willingness, innovativeness, information trust, content consumption, content contribution, and content creation. The measurement scale for parasocial identification was adapted from the research of Schramm and Hartmann, comprising 6 items (Schramm & Hartmann, 2008 ). The source credibility scale was combined from the studies of Cheung et al. and Luo & Yuan’s research in the context of social media influencer marketing, including 4 items (Cheung et al., 2009 ; Lou & Yuan, 2019 ). The scale for informative value was modified based on Voss et al.‘s research, consisting of 4 items (Voss et al., 2003 ). The ad targeting accuracy scale was derived from the research by Qiu Aimei et al., 2018 ) including 3 items. The subjective norm scale was adapted from Ajzen’s original scale, comprising 3 items (Ajzen, 2002 ). The self-disclosure willingness scale was developed based on Chu and Kim’s research, including 3 items (Chu & Kim, 2011 ). The innovativeness scale was formulated following the study by Sun et al., comprising 4 items (Sun et al., 2006 ). The information trust scale was created in reference to Chu and Choi’s research, including 3 items (Chu & Choi, 2011 ). The scales for the three components of social media consumer engagement—content consumption, content contribution, and content creation—were sourced from the research by Buzeta et al., encompassing 8 items in total (Buzeta et al., 2020 ).

All scales were appropriately revised for the context of social media influencer marketing. To avoid issues with scoring neutral attitudes, a uniform Likert seven-point scale was used for each measurement item (ranging from 1 to 7, representing a spectrum from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’). After the overall design of the questionnaire was completed, a pre-test was conducted with 30 social media users to ensure that potential respondents could clearly understand the meaning of each question and that there were no obstacles to answering. This pre-test aimed to prevent any difficulties or misunderstandings in the questionnaire items. The final version of the questionnaire is presented in Table 2 .

Data analysis

Since the model framework of the current study is derived from theoretical deductions of existing research and, while logically constructed, does not originate from an existing research model, this study still falls under the category of exploratory research. According to the analysis suggestions of Hair and other scholars, in cases of exploratory research model frameworks, it is more appropriate to choose Smart PLS for Partial Least Squares Path Analysis (PLS) to conduct data analysis and testing of the research model (Hair et al., 2012 ).

Measurement of model

In this study, careful data collection and management resulted in no missing values in the dataset. This ensured the integrity and reliability of the subsequent data analysis. As shown in Table 3 , after deleting measurement items with factor loadings below 0.5, the final factor loadings of the measurement items in this study range from 0.730 to 0.964. This indicates that all measurement items meet the retention criteria. Additionally, the Cronbach’s α values of the latent variables range from 0.805 to 0.924, and all latent variables have Composite Reliability (CR) values greater than the acceptable value of 0.7, demonstrating that the scales of this study have passed the reliability test requirements (Hair et al., 2019 ). All latent variables in this study have Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values greater than the standard acceptance value of 0.5, indicating that the convergent validity of the variables also meets the standard (Fornell & Larcker, 1981 ). Furthermore, the results show that the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) values for each factor are below 10, indicating that there are no multicollinearity issues with the scales in this study (Hair, 2009 ).

The current study then further verified the discriminant validity of the variables, with specific results shown in Table 4 . The square roots of the average variance extracted (AVE) values for all variables (bolded on the diagonal) are greater than the Pearson correlation coefficients between the variables, indicating that the discriminant validity of the scales in this study meets the required standards (Fornell & Larcker, 1981 ). Additionally, a single-factor test method was employed to examine common method bias in the data. The first unrotated factor accounted for 29.71% of the variance, which is less than the critical threshold of 40%. Therefore, the study passed the test and did not exhibit serious common method bias (Podsakoff et al., 2003 ).

To ensure the robustness and appropriateness of our structural equation model, we also conducted a thorough evaluation of the model fit. Initially, through PLS Algorithm calculations, the R 2 values of each variable were greater than the standard acceptance value of 0.1, indicating good predictive accuracy of the model. Subsequently, Blindfolding calculations were performed, and the results showed that the Stone-Geisser Q 2 values of each variable were greater than 0, demonstrating that the model of this study effectively predicts the relationships between variables (Dijkstra & Henseler, 2015 ). In addition, through CFA, we also obtained some indicator values, specifically, χ 2 /df = 2.528 < 0.3, RMSEA = 0.059 < 0.06, SRMR = 0.055 < 0.08. Given its sensitivity to sample size, we primarily focused on the CFI, TLI, and NFI values, CFI = 0.953 > 0.9, TLI = 0.942 > 0.9, and NFI = 0.923 > 0.9 indicating a good fit. Additionally, RMSEA values below 0.06 and SRMR values below 0.08 were considered indicative of a good model fit. These indices collectively suggested that our model demonstrates a satisfactory fit with the data, thereby reinforcing the validity of our findings.

Research hypothesis testing

The current study employed a Bootstrapping test with a sample size of 5000 on the collected raw data to explore the coefficients and significance of the paths in the research model. The final test data results of this study’s model are presented in Table 5 .

The current study employs S-O-R model as the framework, grounded in theories such as self-determination theory and theory of planned behavior, to construct an influence model of consumer engagement behavior in the context of social media influencer marketing. It examines how influencer factors, advertisement information factors, and social influence factors affect consumer engagement behavior by impacting consumers’ psychological cognitions. Using structural equation modeling to analyze collected data ( N  = 522), it was found that self-disclosure willingness, innovativeness, and information trust positively influence consumer engagement behavior, with innovativeness having the largest impact on higher levels of engagement. Influencer factors, advertisement information factors, and social factors serve as effective external stimuli, influencing psychological motivators and, consequently, consumer engagement behavior. The specific research results are illustrated in Fig. 2 .

Tested structural model of consumer engagement behavior.

The impact of psychological motivators on different levels of consumer engagement: self-disclosure willingness, innovativeness, and information trust

The research analysis indicates that self-disclosure willingness and information trust are key drivers for content consumption (H1a, H2a validated). This aligns with previous findings that individuals with a higher willingness to disclose themselves show greater levels of engagement behavior (Chu et al., 2023 ); likewise, individuals who trust advertisement information are more inclined to engage with advertisement content (Kim, Kim, 2021 ). Moreover, our study finds that information trust has a stronger impact on content consumption, underscoring the importance of trust in the dissemination of advertisement information. However, no significant association was found between individual innovativeness and content consumption (H3a not validated).

Regarding the dimension of content contribution in consumer engagement, self-disclosure willingness, information trust, and innovativeness all positively impact it (H1b, H2b, and H3b all validated). This is consistent with earlier research findings that individuals with higher self-disclosure willingness are more likely to like, comment on, or share content posted by influencers on social media platforms (Towner et al., 2022 ); the conclusions of this paper also support that innovativeness is an important psychological driver for active participation in social media interactions (Kamboj & Sharma, 2023 ). However, at the level of consumer engagement in content contribution, while information trust also exerts a positive effect, its impact is the weakest, although information trust has the strongest impact on content consumption.

In social media advertising, the ideal outcome is the highest level of consumer engagement, i.e., content creation, meaning consumers actively join in brand content creation, seeing themselves as co-creators with the brand (Nadeem et al., 2021 ). Our findings reveal that self-disclosure willingness, innovativeness, and information trust all positively influence content creation (H1c, H2c, and H3c all validated). The analysis found that similar to the impact on content contribution, innovativeness has the most significant effect on encouraging individual content creation, followed by self-disclosure willingness, with information trust having the least impact.

In summary, while some previous studies have shown that self-disclosure willingness, innovativeness, and information trust are important factors in promoting consumer engagement (Chu et al., 2023 ; Nadeem et al., 2021 ; Geng et al., 2021 ), this study goes further by integrating and comparing all three within the same research framework. It was found that to trigger higher levels of consumer engagement behavior, trust is not the most crucial psychological motivator; rather, the most effective method is to stimulate consumers’ innovativeness, thus complementing previous research. Subsequently, this study further explores the impact of different stimulus factors on various psychological motivators.

The influence of external stimulus factors on psychological motivators: influencer factors, advertisement information factors, and social factors

The current findings indicate that influencer factors, such as parasocial identification and source credibility, effectively enhance consumer engagement by influencing self-disclosure willingness and information trust. This aligns with prior research highlighting the significance of parasocial identification (Shan et al., 2020 ). Studies suggest parasocial identification positively impacts consumer engagement by boosting self-disclosure willingness and information trust (validated H4a, H4b, H4c, and H5a), but not content contribution or creation through information trust (H5b, H5c not validated). Source credibility’s influence on self-disclosure willingness was not significant (H6 not validated), thus negating the mediating effect of self-disclosure willingness (H6a, H6b, H6c not validated). Influencer credibility mainly affects engagement through information trust (H7a, H7b, H7c validated), supporting previous findings (Shan et al., 2020 ).

Advertisement factors (informative value and ad targeting accuracy) promote engagement through innovativeness and information trust. Informative value significantly impacts higher-level content contribution and creation through innovativeness (H8b, H8c validated), while ad targeting accuracy influences consumer engagement at all levels mainly through information trust (H10a, H10b, H10c validated).

Social factors (subjective norms) enhance self-disclosure willingness and information trust, consistent with previous research (Wirth et al., 2019 ; Gupta et al., 2021 ), and further promote consumer engagement across all levels (H11a, H11b, H11c, H12a, H12b, and H12c all validated).

In summary, influencer, advertisement, and social factors impact consumer engagement behavior by influencing psychological motivators, with influencer factors having the greatest effect on content consumption, advertisement content factors significantly raising higher-level consumer engagement through innovativeness, and social factors also influencing engagement through self-disclosure willingness and information trust.

Implication

From a theoretical perspective, current research presents a comprehensive model of consumer engagement within the context of influencer advertising on social media. This model not only expands the research horizon in the fields of social media influencer advertising and consumer engagement but also serves as a bridge between two crucial themes in new media advertising studies. Influencer advertising has become an integral part of social media advertising, and the construction of a macro model aids researchers in understanding consumer psychological processes and behavioral patterns. It also assists advertisers in formulating more effective strategies. Consumer engagement, focusing on the active role of consumers in disseminating information and the long-term impact on advertising effectiveness, aligns more closely with the advertising effectiveness measures in the new media context than traditional advertising metrics. However, the intersection of these two vital themes lacks comprehensive research and a universal model. This study constructs a model that elucidates the effects of various stimuli on consumer psychology and engagement behaviors, exploring the connections and mechanisms through different mediating pathways. By differentiating levels of engagement, the study offers more nuanced conclusions for diverse advertising objectives. Furthermore, this research validates the applicability of self-determination theory in the context of influencer advertising effectiveness. While this psychological theory has been utilized in communication behavior research, its effectiveness in the field of advertising requires further exploration. The current study introduces self-determination theory into the realm of influencer advertising and consumer engagement, thereby expanding its application in the field of advertising communication. It also responds to the call from the advertising and marketing academic community to incorporate more psychological theories to explain the ‘black box’ of consumer psychology. The inclusion of this theory re-emphasizes the people-centric approach of this research and highlights the primary role of individuals in advertising communication studies.

From a practical perspective, this study provides significant insights for adapting marketing strategies to the evolving media landscape and the empowered role of audiences. Firstly, in the face of changes in the communication environment and the empowerment of audience communication capabilities, traditional marketing approaches are becoming inadequate for new media advertising needs. Traditional advertising focuses on direct, point-to-point effects, whereas social media advertising aims for broader, point-to-mass communication, leveraging audience proactivity to facilitate the viral spread of content across online social networks. Secondly, for brands, the general influence model proposed in this study offers guidance for influencer advertising strategy. If the goal is to maximize reach and brand recognition with a substantial advertising budget, partnering with top influencers who have a large following can be an effective strategy. However, if the objective is to maximize cost-effectiveness with a limited budget by leveraging consumer initiative for secondary spread, the focus should be on designing advertising content that stimulates consumer creativity and willingness to innovate. Thirdly, influencers are advised to remain true to their followers. In influencer marketing, influencers attract advertisers through their influence over followers, converting this influence into commercial gain. This influence stems from the trust followers place in the influencer, thus influencers should maintain professional integrity and prioritize the quality of information they share, even when presented with advertising opportunities. Lastly, influencers should assert more control over their relationships with advertisers. In traditional advertising, companies and brands often exert significant control over the content. However, in the social media era, influencers should negotiate more creative freedom in their advertising partnerships, asserting a more equal relationship with advertisers. This approach ensures that content quality remains high, maintaining the trust influencers have built with their followers.

Limitations and future directions

while this study offers valuable insights into the dynamics of influencer marketing and consumer engagement on social media, several limitations should be acknowledged: Firstly, constrained by the research objectives and scope, this study’s proposed general impact model covers three dimensions: influencers, advertisement information, and social factors. However, these dimensions are not limited to the five variables discussed in this paper. Therefore, we call for future research to supplement and explore more crucial factors. Secondly, in the actual communication environment, there may be differences in the impact of communication effectiveness across various social media platforms. Thus, future research could also involve comparative studies and explorations between different social media platforms. Thirdly, the current study primarily examines the direct effects of various factors on consumer engagement. However, the potential interaction effects between these variables (e.g., how influencers’ credibility might interact with advertisement information quality) are not extensively explored. Future research could investigate these complex interrelationships for a more holistic understanding. Lastly, our study, being cross-sectional, offers preliminary insights into the complex and dynamic nature of engagement between social media influencers and consumers, yet it does not incorporate the temporal dimension. The diverse impacts of psychological needs on engagement behaviors hint at an underlying dynamism that merits further investigation. Future research should consider employing longitudinal designs to directly observe how these dynamics evolve over time.

The findings of the current study not only theoretically validate the applicability of self-determination theory in the field of social media influencer marketing advertising research but also broaden the scope of advertising effectiveness research from the perspective of consumer engagement. Moreover, the research framework offers strategic guidance and reference for influencer marketing strategies. The main conclusions of this study can be summarized as follows.

Innovativeness is the key factor in high-level consumer engagement behavior. Content contribution represents a higher level of consumer engagement compared to content consumption, as it not only requires consumers to dedicate attention to viewing advertising content but also to share this information across adjacent nodes within their social networks. This dissemination of information is a pivotal factor in the success of influencer marketing advertisements. Hence, companies and brands prioritize consumers’ content contribution over mere viewing of advertising content (Qiu & Kumar, 2017 ). Compared to content consumption and contribution, content creation is considered the highest level of consumer engagement, where consumers actively create and upload brand-related content, and it represents the most advanced outcome sought by enterprises and brands in advertising campaigns (Cheung et al., 2021 ). The current study posits that to pursue better outcomes in social media influencer advertising marketing, enhancing consumers’ willingness for self-disclosure, innovativeness, and trust in advertising information are effective strategies. However, the crux lies in leveraging the consumer’s subjective initiative, particularly in boosting their innovativeness. If the goal is simply to achieve content consumption rather than higher levels of consumer engagement, the focus should be on fostering trust in advertising information. There is no hierarchy in the efficacy of different strategies; they should align with varying marketing contexts and advertising objectives.

The greatest role of social media influencers lies in attracting online traffic. information trust is the core element driving content consumption, and influencer factors mainly affect consumer engagement behaviors through information trust. Therefore, this study suggests that the primary role of influencers in social media advertising is to attract online traffic, i.e., increase consumer behavior regarding ad content consumption (reducing avoidance of ad content), and help brands achieve the initial goal of making consumers “see and complete ads.” However, their impact on further high-level consumer engagement behaviors is limited. This mechanism serves as a reminder to advertisers not to overestimate the effects of influencers in marketing. Currently, top influencers command a significant portion of the ad budget, which could squeeze the budget for other aspects of advertising, potentially affecting the overall effectiveness of the campaign. Businesses and brands should consider deeper strategic implications when planning their advertising campaigns.

Valuing Advertising Information Factors, Content Remains King. Our study posits that in the social media influencer marketing context, the key to enhancing consumer contribution and creation of advertising content lies primarily in the advertising information factors. In other words, while content consumption is important, advertisers should objectively assess the role influencers play in advertising. In the era of social media, content remains ‘king’ in advertising. This view indirectly echoes the points made in the previous paragraph: influencers effectively perform initial ‘online traffic generation’ tasks in social media, but this role should not be overly romanticized or exaggerated. Whether it’s companies, brands, or influencers, providing consumers with advertisements rich in informational value is crucial to achieving better advertising outcomes and potentially converting consumers into stakeholders.

Subjective norm is an unignorable social influence factor. Social media is characterized by its network structure of information dissemination, where a node’s information is visible to adjacent nodes. For instance, if user A likes a piece of content C from influencer I, A’s follower B, who may not follow influencer I, can still see content C via user A’s page. The aim of marketing in the social media era is to influence a node and then spread the information to adjacent nodes, either secondarily or multiple times (Kumar & Panda, 2020 ). According to the Theory of Planned Behavior, an individual’s actions are influenced by significant others in their lives, such as family and friends. Previous studies have proven the effectiveness of the Theory of Planned Behavior in influencing attitudes toward social media advertising (Ranjbarian et al., 2012 ). Current research further confirms that subjective norms also influence consumer engagement behaviors in influencer marketing on social media. Therefore, in advertising practice, brands should not only focus on individual consumers but also invest efforts in groups that can influence consumer decisions. Changing consumer behavior in the era of social media marketing doesn’t solely rely on the company’s efforts.

As communication technology advances, media platforms will further empower individual communicative capabilities, moving beyond the era of the “magic bullet” theory. The distinction between being a recipient and a transmitter of information is increasingly blurred. In an era where everyone is both an audience and an influencer, research confined to the role of the ‘recipient’ falls short of addressing the dynamics of ‘transmission’. Future research in marketing and advertising should thus focus more on the power of individual transmission. Furthermore, as Marshall McLuhan famously said, “the medium is the extension of man.” The evolution of media technology remains human-centric. Accordingly, future marketing research, while paying heed to media transformations, should emphasize the centrality of the ‘human’ element.

Data availability

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to privacy issues. Making the full data set publicly available could potentially breach the privacy that was promised to participants when they agreed to take part, and may breach the ethics approval for the study. The data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank all the participants of this study. The participants were all informed about the purpose and content of the study and voluntarily agreed to participate. The participants were able to stop participating at any time without penalty. Funding for this study was provided by Minjiang University Research Start-up Funds (No. 324-32404314).

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Conceptualization: CG; methodology: CG and QD; software: CG and QD; validation: CG; formal analysis: CG and QD; investigation: CG and QD; resources: CG; data curation: CG and QD; writing—original draft preparation: CG; writing—review and editing: CG; visualization: CG; project administration: CG. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Chenyu Gu .

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Gu, C., Duan, Q. Exploring the dynamics of consumer engagement in social media influencer marketing: from the self-determination theory perspective. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 587 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03127-w

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Received : 17 December 2023

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03127-w

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