How Do You Wish to Appear? An Empirical Study of Factors Affect Intention to Purchase Face-Swap Apps Under Social Comparison Perspective

Abstract

Face-swap models have increasingly gained popularity in recent years because of their improvement in generation quality and applications in privacy protection and entertainment. The study primarily examines underlying factors that influence individuals’ intention to purchase Face swap apps. A research framework drawing upon the social comparison theory was proposed to explain the relationship between four categories of social comparison (upward identification, upward contrast, downward identification, downward contrast) on self-esteem, appearance dissatisfaction, curiosity, perceived enjoyment, privacy concern, and purchase intention toward paid apps. The PLS-SEM technique was employed to analyze data from a survey of 315 respondents. The results indicated that upon the aforementioned variables, curiosity and privacy concerns were two key factors driving users a higher intention to purchase Face-swap apps. Meanwhile, perceived enjoyment had no significant impact on purchase intention. These exploratory findings contributed a number of theoretical and practical implications.