A gaming influencer's credibility predicts intention to buy — but measure its three parts separately and only “trust” appears to work

Theory says audiences follow influencers rather than celebrities because influencers are more credible, but the empirical evidence is mixed and almost none of it concerns gaming. The study asks two things: does source credibility — attractiveness, trustworthiness and expertise — predict intention to buy the games an influencer plays, and could the inconsistent results of earlier studies be an artefact of how their models were specified?

An online survey of followers of one of the world's largest gaming YouTubers (PewDiePie), drawn from many countries. 414 responses were screened down to 238 eligible participants (77.3% men, mean age around 21–22). The three components of credibility were measured with Ohanian's scale, alongside intention to buy games the influencer plays. Analysis used correlations and two competing structural equation models. The data is openly available on OSF.

• All three components correlate with purchase intention: trustworthiness r = 0.51, attractiveness 0.46, expertise 0.33, and overall credibility 0.54.
• But when the three are entered as separate predictors in one model, only trustworthiness stays significant and the other two vanish (R² = 0.33). The authors argue this is a “bad controls” problem: the three are facets of one construct and overlap heavily, so making them compete in the same equation masks each other's effect.
• Modelled instead as a single second-order “credibility” factor with three facets, the path to purchase intention is 0.54 (R² = 0.29) and the model fits well (CFI 0.955). The authors suggest the contradictory findings in earlier work most likely came from the first kind of model.
• Followers do not particularly intend to buy. Mean purchase intention sat around the neutral point (3.14–3.45 on a 5-point scale) even among people who watch regularly.
• The expertise scale had low reliability (α = 0.46), so results for that facet should be read with less confidence.

For brands working with gaming influencers: do not pick a partner by ticking “looks good” or “is skilled” as separate boxes — what works is the overall credibility the audience perceives, with trustworthiness at its core. For researchers: a result that appears to show attractiveness and expertise “don't matter” may be a side-effect of the equation rather than a fact about audiences. And purchase intention hovering at neutral is a reminder that watching and buying are different things.