Cognitive and affective dimensions of resistance to personalized social media advertising: An integrated framework of the persuasion knowledge model and psychological reactance theory.

As personalized advertising becomes increasingly prevalent on social media, understanding why informed consumers resist such messages is essential. This study integrates the Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM) and Psychological Reactance Theory (PRT) to examine the relationships among persuasion knowledge, ad skepticism, perceived intrusiveness, and consumers' avoidance of personalized advertising. Using survey data from 977 social media users in Pakistan and analyzed through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), results reveal that persuasion knowledge is positively associated with ad skepticism (β = 0.228, p < 0.001), perceived intrusiveness (β = 0.437, p < 0.001), and ad avoidance (β = 0.150, p < 0.001). Moreover, ad skepticism and perceived intrusiveness sequentially mediate these associations, consistent with the proposed framework. The findings indicate that greater knowledge of persuasive intent is associated with skepticism and perceived intrusiveness, which are associated with advertising avoidance. The research extends the application of the integrated PKM and PRT perspective to examine both cognitive and affective dimensions of consumer resistance among social media users in an emerging digital market such as Pakistan. It offers practical insights for developing transparent, autonomy-respecting, and less intrusive personalization strategies in digital advertising.