Does Disclosing a Digital Human’s Identity Mitigate the Negative Emotions that Anthropomorphic Endorsements May Elicit?

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_105How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Virtual Digital Humans; Identity Disclosure; Anthropomorphism; Uncanny Valley Effect

Abstract

Within the digital economy, virtual digital humans have become a prominent communication technology and are increasingly used in commercial practice. Centring on luxury-brand endorsements and drawing on the uncanny valley effect, this study employs a questionnaire survey and empirical analysis to assess consumers’ perceptual responses and brand favourability across multiple experiential dimensions. Results show that endorsement posters featuring digital-human technology reduce consumers’ brand favourability. To lessen perceived eeriness or behavioural strangeness, firms should enhance interaction and foster identification between digital humans and consumers. Moreover, the psychological distance between luxury brands and consumers plays a mediating role in the link between digital-human endorsement posters and brand favourability, corroborating the presence of an uncanny valley effect in virtual endorsement contexts.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Muzi Li
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/07
TI  - Does Disclosing a Digital Human’s Identity Mitigate the Negative Emotions that Anthropomorphic Endorsements May Elicit?
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 12th International Conference on Digital Humanities and Frontiers in Social Sciences (DHFSS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 971
EP  - 980
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_105
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_105
ID  - Li2026
ER  -