How perceived control affects advertising avoidance intention in a skippable advertising context: a moderated mediation model

Abstract

Video advertising has become an essential source of revenue for streaming media websites. Because of the differences between the business models of Chinese and foreign video websites, in this study, we conducted a survey to empirically test a conceptual model in the Chinese context. In the model, we integrated perceived intrusiveness as a mediator and perceived ad content quality as a moderator to better understand how perceived control affects ad avoidance intention and whether the form of skippable advertising was available to Chinese websites. The results of the structural equation model (SEM) showed that perceived control induced by skippable video advertising negatively affected ad avoidance intention, and perceived intrusiveness partially mediated the relationship between users’ perceptions of control and advertising avoidance intention. The results of the conditional process analysis showed that perceived advertising content quality moderated the indirect path from perceived control to advertising avoidance intention. These findings have positive implications for enriching the research on psychological mechanisms and the condition of intention to avoid skippable video advertising, which could help optimize strategies for both advertisers and media websites.