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Malaysian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (MJSSH), Volume 6, Issue 10, (page 543 - 557), 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.47405/mjssh.v6i10.1125

Malaysian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (MJSSH)

Volume 6, Issue 10, October 2021

e-ISSN : 2504-8562
Journal home page:
www.msocialsciences.com

Social Media Influencers and The Dietary Choices Among University Students

Syahruddin Ahmad1, Diandra Eleanor Bruno1

1Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), Malaysia

Correspondence: Syahruddin Ahmad ([email protected])

Abstract
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
This study investigated the attitude and subjective norms of students on Social Media Influencers
(SMIs) towards the behavioural intent on their dietary choices in accordance with the Theory of
Reasoned Action. Social media influencers as groups of people have had to some extent constructed a
reputation for themselves through applying social media platforms to promote oneself. In completing
the study, the final year students in Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) were selected as the respondents.
The results of the study showed there is a significant relationship between the subjective norms of
students on SMIs with the behavioral intent on their dietary choices. Thus, the study concluded that
attitude of students towards the SMIs does not affected their daily dietary choices, however, the
subjective norms in the students’ life on the SMIs actually makes a difference in their eating habits.
Based on the findings of the study, 97.6% of the students believed that they have healthy dietary
choices. This study also shows that, 98.8% of the respondents subscribe to social media influencers
on their social media accounts. The findings alone indicated that the students’ live are impacted by
them. Furthermore, most of them follow the social media influencers on every social media
platform: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Twitter. However, Instagram is the most used
social media platform to subscribe to them.

Keywords: Social Media Influencers (SMIs), dietary choices, behavioral intent, university
students, attitude
______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Introduction

These days, there is no doubt that young adults, especially university students have their own social
media accounts and on their own account, they are following at least one influencer on any social
media sites (Khalid et al., 2018). Each user on the platform has their own interest and there are variety of
social media influencers (SMIs) on the internet. Social media influencers are groups of people that
have constructed a reputation for themselves through applying social media platforms to promote
oneself (Lokithasan et al., 2019). There are beauty influencers, fashion influencers, food influencers,
fitness influencers and etc. All of these SMIs somehow managed to always inspire their users in doing
something new i.e., influencing their opinion on their lifestyle (Khalid et al., 2018). These influencers
initiate trends over the social networks, and they play a significant role in shaping the opinions of
users on the internet (Qualman, 2012). As an influencer, their opinions played an important role in the
lifestyles of young adults as they are viewed as the dominant users (Nandagiri & Philip, 2018) on the
social networking such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. This is due to their opinion influences
the thoughts of users – mostly young adults.

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Nowadays, the SMIs also influences the attitude and behaviour of young adults over their dietary
choices (Khalid et al., 2018). When it comes to dietary choices, it is significant to practice a well-
balanced diet as bad diets such as consuming junk food, skipping meals, as well as a lack of adequate
diet are known to trigger different health issues. A well dietary choices it is an essential part of life
since it may influence long-term health consequences (Ansar et al., 2015).

Correspondingly, a healthy diet is also considered to have an important part in the lives of university
students. This is due to students' physical well- being and cognitive stability can be strengthened by
maintaining a healthy diet. Per the international research findings (Stock & Larsen, 2008; Peltzer et al.,
2014) student life in the university environment is characterised by many changes in eating behaviours
and nutritional patterns. According to multiple researches (Deliens et al., 2014; Alves & Boog, 2007),
students frequently resorted in bad eating habits and had low dietary health throughout their transition
from high to university. At this time, proper nutrition is essential for ensuring overall health, and
achieving excellent educational success.

Background of Study

Today’s society is not the same as the one ten years earlier. People adapt into the way the world is today
and so does the society around them. Their choices of lifestyles are heavily influenced by so many
factors which includes their level of education, interpersonal influences, social networks and etc. As
the world and the people are continuously evolving, maintaining a healthy lifestyle could be the most
difficult thing to do. At the present time, the dietary choices of young adults are believed to be affected
by a variety of rationale. Other than genetics, lifestyles are actually the culprit behind the poor dietary
choices among people nowadays. Poor dietary choices can result in obesity which can ultimately lead to
multiple health concerns such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and many more serious health
concerns.

Based on the National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2019, discovered that 30.4 percent of
adults in Malaysia were overweight and 19.7 percent obese. Beyond any doubt the reason behind those
result was poor diet. The Malaysian Dietary Guidelines advice people to limit the intake of foods high
in fats and to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables every day. However, based on the NHMS data alone, it
was proven that there is a numberof Malaysians who do not comply to such dietary guidelines.

The prevalence of poor diet and eating behaviors among university students in Malaysia is growing.
This can be supported by the study performed by Radzi et al. (2019), where the outcome of the study
stated that the number of university students in Malaysia who are obese actually goes beyond the
national average and this is actually worrying. Given the students’ busy schedule and them having to
live away from their family, contributes to the reason they are not eating well. Normally, people who
practice healthy eating behaviour in the course of studying in the university are more inclined to practice
that particular behaviour later on in their life. On the contrary, those students who did not practice
healthy eating in the university are more inclined to continue doing so even after they graduated
(Sanusi, 2020).

Even with the existence of the Malaysian Dietary Guidelines, no doubt that young adults do not pay
much attention to such guidelines as the study conducted by Sugathan and Bagh (2014), stated that the
obesity rates among university students in Malaysia range from 14 percent to 32 percent which is
considered relatively high. Therefore, since students are technically the future of Malaysia, it is
significant to discover the basis behind the university students poor dietary choices.

Since the world nowadays actually revolve around social media, young adults especially students are
the ones who spend the most time being on social media. As reported by the Digital Information
World (2019), people aged between 16-24 years old spend the most time on social media. On the
grounds of this, there must be a connection between social media and the students’ dietary choices as
technically they spend half of the day being on social media.

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Serman and Sims (2020) also believe that the influencers have the power to influence others by their
lifestyle, buying habits, their attitude and their behavior. As the number of blog content posted by the
influencers increases, it leads to changes to people’s buying habits. Thus, they have the skills of
documenting their lives in such a way to the point that they are able to inspire people instantly, which
makes them interesting. As claimed by Hermanda et al. (2019), social media users implicitly regarded
social media influencers as role models for their lifestyle because the users were able to see
correlations between them and influencers in the social media. In other words, the SMIs have the
ability to connect with their users on such a level to the point that they are willing to let them affect
their process in decision-making.

Social media influencers technically are the owner of the internet (McCorquodale, 2019) as they
regulate the direction, the type of content people watch, the products people buy, and the thoughts
people have to an extent. To put it another way, the influencers seem to have a powerful influence on
the lifestyle of their devoted followers. Therefore, there must be a reason that people tend to trust the
opinion of the influencers to the extent that they are often dominated by the opinion of the influencers.
By way of illustration, most young adults with social media accounts are following at least one SMI of
their own liking and they will prefer to listen to the advice of the influencers for the reason that these
influencers always seem remarkably reliable in the world of social media. The SMIs are also known as
the modern opinion leaders as their opinion tend to have the biggest impact on young adults. Take for
example, a social media influencer posted on his blog about his opinion on the recent coffee shop in
which he describes it to be peaceful and a great place to do his work while having coffee, the moment
he postedit, his followers will be influenced by his opinion.

Nowadays, the internet and social media serves as a well-known place where people search for health
information (Mete et al., 2019). The social media has become a place where anyone can share
information regarding nutrition without being a certified dietician or nutritionist (Granheim et al.,
2020). As an influencer, their opinions played an important role in the lifestyles of young adults as
they are viewed as the dominant users on the social networking sites such as Instagram, Twitter,
Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. Therefore, without question, the students are actually allowing the
social media influencers to guide them in any areas of their lives. As in view of the fact that more
people are becoming dependent on social media influencers, they are actually resorting to social media
whenever they have any inquiries on any areas of their lives as this is more convenient for them. All
they had to do is take out their phone and search for it over the internet. Therefore, again, this alone
indicated a relation between the influencer and the lifestyle of students regarding their dietary choices.

Problem Statement

Young adulthood is a life stage in peoples’ lives where they started to develop life skills that will affect
their life in the long run and these days, the existence along with the rise of social media influencers
(SMIs) affected every area of peoples’ lives specifically on their food choices. Data revealed that the
formation of habits and likings are related to media use (Basil, 1990) along with the choices of food
(Birch, 1999). It is pivotal to shape the right eating habits during young adulthood as high chances is,
the habits they formed now, whether it is good or bad, will remain in their live throughout adulthood.

Young adults are consistently fascinated by the fame of the SMIs, and they are their main source of
information including fashion tips, food choices and etc. Thus, they tend to build online relationship
with the influencers and under those circumstance, the SMIs are able to shape their followers lifestyle. As
the number of social media influencers increases, there is an issue on them being unreliable. As claimed
by Lofft (2020), some of the influencers are actually unqualified nutritionist and yet, when they post
health-related content on their social media accounts, people tend to believe them. Some influencers
claimed to be a ‘nutritionist’ over the internet by selling personalised diets when they are not even a
certified nutritionist, and this raises an issue that it is significant to acknowledge that not all social
media influencers are what they claimed to be over the internet.

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Since the social media influencers have the ability to talk about diets and health information with such
credibility over the internet, people are more prone into believing them even though, the information
that they posted on the internet might not be true. Hence, there must be a reason behind people
listening to the opinion of the social media influencers even though there are news informing people
that the influencers are most often not what they claimed tobe.

The internet has formed a digital food environment which the communication about food and nutrition
is prevalent through multiple social media sites. “Digital activities on social media have transformed
how health information is communicated and how the public engages with it” (Fernandez et al., 2020).
That being the case, the rise of the internet has truly emerged in so many ways to the point that it exerts
influence upon how people communicate about food nowadays.

A study made in 2019 had revealed that children and teenagers that have their own social media apps, are
exposed to unhealthy food and drinks that came from content posted from the SMIs or from
advertisements. The result of the study found out that teenagers viewed more food related content on
social media than children and most of them were exposed with unhealthy food products like fast
food. The study focused solely on children and teenagers aging between 7-16 years old in Canada
(Kent et al., 2019). Most often the SMIs posted content on social media of them eating variety of junk
food, this is a way for them to promote the chosen food brand. Due to the creativity of the influencers
in promoting the food, for sure they would be drawn into purchasing the food even though it might not
be healthy for them.

On that account, a study is required to investigate the relationship between social media influencers
and the attitudes and the behaviour of young adults. So far, there is less study conducted on that
matter. Thus, researcher will find out whether social media influencers have positive relationship
towards the attitude and behavior of students towards their dietary choices. Researcher will focus
solely on the final year students in Universiti Malaysia Sabah as they are young adults with social
media accounts, and they are the ones who spend the most time on social media.

Research Objective

i. To investigate whether there is a significant relationship between the attitude on social media
influencers with students’ behavioral intent on theirdietary choices
ii. To investigate whether there is a significant relationship between the subjective norm on social
media influencers with students’ behavioral intenton their dietary choices
iii. To investigate the role of social media influencers and students’ dietary choices

Research Question

The research questions for this study are:

i. Does attitude on social media influencers have significant relationship with students’
behavioral intent on their dietary choices?
ii. Does subjective norms on social media influencers have significant relationship with
students’ behavioral intent on their dietary choices?
iii. What is the role of social media influencers and students’ dietary choices?

Literature Review

Beyond doubt, individuals around the world today use social media applications to communicate and
exchange information as mass communication channels like the television, newspapers and radio are
no longer serving as the dominant place to search for information. Nowadays, people are more
dependent on the online personae – social media influencers (SMIs), for information like lifestyle, food,

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technology, beauty and so on (Yuan & Lou, 2020). According to research, the social media influencers
are known as celebrities and role models among people (Gleason et al., 2017).

The social media influencers would often build their online personae on social media platform such as
Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and etc. An article mentioned that the SMIs are now ‘taking over the
world’ (Roose, 2019) as their online personality alone have the ability to capture the attention of people
around the world and they have the power to influence the behaviour of their followers as well. Studies
showed that the influencers have the power to influence the way people perceive brands, products and
most companies nowadays are relying on the influencers as a way for them to promote their brands
(Almousa et al., 2020; Voramontri & Klieb, 2019). With this, certainly the influencers are also able to
influence students regarding their attitude on their dietary choices.

In this study, the influencers power towards the dietary choices of students will be investigated as
current research pertaining to how the influencers affected the attitude and behaviours of university
students towards their dietary choices in Sabah is still very limited. Thus, this chapter discusses
relevant literature denoting to dietary choices and social media influencers. This chapter also discuss
the theory that is used in this study as guidance to conduct this research. Furthermore, the theory will
be further explained along with conceptual framework to help further understand the theory used in
this research.

Dietary choices in the use of social media

Preedy and Watson (2010) stated that dietary choices are the daily choices developed by individuals or
group on the choices of food they consumed. They suggested that the reasonable dietary choices
actually involve a variation of vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates and fats where these
variations take part in the wellbeing of humans. Presently, the usage of social media affected the eating
attitudes and behaviours of people (Papathomas et al., 2019) as numbers of research has been done to
investigate the relationship between social media and nutrition where they had actually found relation
between those two variables. Social media has the potential to improve the dietary choices for young
adults. However, only a few studies evaluated the effectiveness of social media components.

A study by Holland and Tiggeman (2016) found constant positive relationships between the usage of
social media, disordered eating and body dissatisfaction, the result showed social media has a negative
effect on body image and the eating behaviour of people. The term ‘insta-norm’ was created to reflect the
power of social media towards the practices of nutrition happening on Instagram and the norm around
Instagram is the concept of ‘ethno-nutritionism’, where Atkinson (2011) explained the concept as extreme
dietary practices. Based on the research by Holland and Tiggeman (2016), social media platforms
portrayed the popular diet-related ‘insta-norms’ which affected youth to practice such extreme diets
which eventually affected their health. Their study suggested that interventions must be conducted as
social media influenced unhealthy eating behaviours towards youth and that it is important to increase
the social media literacy among young adults.

Research showed the dietary choices of university students are generally bad as students showed more
tendency to consume less vegetables and fruits and reported high intake of high-calorie foods
(Deshpande et al., 2009). This research can be supported by Sogari et al., (2018) where they found
university students are more inclined to gain weight due to poor eating habits and thus, they believed
that it is significant to increase the knowledge regarding healthy dietary choices among university
students.

Swindle et al. (2018) study found that Facebook is a practical platform to educate on nutrition to
engage parents in a preschool obesity prevention. Hence, they used Facebook to deliver health-related
education to educate parents in improving nutrition for young children. They also discovered that the
more teachers post content regarding nutrition, the more parents understood the concept of healthy
eating. However, currently there are still limited study targeting the university students regarding
which social media platform is suitable for them to learn about nutrition values.

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Klassen et al. (2018) argued social media serves as potential tool to support healthier food choices
among young adults. The result showed that using social media to facilitate healthier dietary choices
among young adults requires careful and thorough experimental designs as social media could
contribute to poor dietary choices in young adults. Thus, Klassen et al. (2018) suggested more research is
needed to investigate social media use in supporting healthier dietary choices among young adults.
Accordingly, based on Sidani et al. (2016), the influence of social media towards eating concerns do not
receive much attention, they discovered there is a strong coalition between social media use and eating
behaviour among young adults in America. However, they suggested a more specific research on the
influence of social media characteristics is required to investigate further on the impact of social media
towards the eating behaviour of young adults.

According to Lofft (2020), the number of Canadians relying on social media as their source of health
information is increasing. Based on the 2019 survey conducted by Statistics Canada, it was revealed
that nearly six in 10 Canadians aging under 35 depended on social media when it comes to finding
information regarding their health. This can be supported by Pollard et al. (2016) and Hayes et al.
(2016) where researchers also found out that people use the Internet as source of nutrition information.
Lofft (2020) also stated that they prefer to look up to the social media influencers blogs or tweets
whenever they wanted to search for health informations on the internet. However, only five percent of
Canadians reported being well educated about health information. The study only proved that the
influencers play a role in shaping the dietary behaviour of Canadians even though the influencers are
not authorised doctors.

Social Media Influencers (SMIs)

Social Media Influencers (SMIs) portray the up-to-date form of the unconventional third-party
endorser that have the power to influence peoples’ lifestyle through the means of social media such as
Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and other social media sites (Freberg et al., 2011). Social
media influencer is a third-party person with high social standing and acquire the skills of a strong
social influence (Lu et al., 2012), or micro-celebrities or social media stars (Gaenssle & Budzinski,
2020). Social influence includes both deliberate and accidental attempts in convincing people to alter
their values, behaviours and actions (Gass, 2015). In simpler terms, social media influencers are those
people who gain popularity in social media sites as a result of their creativity that can attract numbers of
followers into subscribing to them as for example, the famous Malaysian SMIs – Samantha Lee, a food
influencer who created an Instagram page about food. She had over 621k followers on Instagram and
there is no doubt that it was her creativity and online personae that attract that many followers.

Nowadays, most organisation employ the SMIs as a way for them to influence and persuade
consumers. As claimed by Zak and Hasprova (2020), the action of consumers decision-making process
is heavily influenced by the modern opinion leaders – the social media influencers. Zak and Hasprova
(2020) study stated that the opinion leaders affected the attitudes, opinions and thoughts of consumers.
Based on the result of the study, they found that the promotions of products by the SMIs are actually
more successful than products that are not promoted by the influencers. Thus, influencers have the most
impact on clothes, shoes, cosmetics. However, the study also stated that people do not rely on the
SMIs regarding their food buying decision-making process.

This can be supported by Gashi (2017), as the study claimed that the influencers are responsible for
influencing consumers’ purchase decision. In Gashi (2017) study, it was found that the expertise of the
SMIs in creating content, their attractiveness, social identity and trust had actually proved that they play
a significant role in consumers’ purchase decision process. Then again, it was their online personae
that ultimately gives them the power to influence their followers as a result of their impact through the
content they posted and their ability to form an online relationship with their followers.

According to Freberg et al. (2011) study, the social media influencers’ success is to all intents and
purposes is important to brands. This is due to, the fame and the power of the SMIs can easily attract
people into purchasing the brand they are posting on their social media sites. The result showed that
brands are depending on the SMIs to promote their company. With this, the study proved that the

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SMIs have the power on branding. In addition to that, even though the SMIs can easily attract people
into purchasing a brand positively (Zak & Hasprova, 2020), they also have the power to negatively
influenced the brand. All of this goes back to the way they promote the product. Thus, the study
showed that, not all influencers can bring positive impact to brands.

Furthermore, Lokithasan et al. (2019) said that there are differences between male and female
influencers’ way of influencing people in their lives. Their study showed that female influencers that
promote beauty products tend to attract female followers whilst male are more into male influencers
that promote games and technology. Lokithasan et al. (2019) also said that their respondents are
attracted to the influencers mainly due to entertainment factor and for further information regarding the
products that they represented. Their study also claimed that female respondents prefer influencers
who posted more information than entertainment, however, this was not the case from the male
respondents.

Lofft (2020) argued that social media influencers impacted the lives of young adults in so many ways
as they have a way of shaping the identity of their followers especially now in the age of social media.
Besides influencing consumers’ purchase decision and branding, influencers also affected the lives of
young adults on their eating habits. Studies showed the foundation of habits and food preferences are
linked to the consumption of social media use (Lofft, 2020). This can be supported by the study
conducted by Almousa, Alsaikhan and Aloud (2020) where the result of their study stated that social
media has a crucial role in shaping the dietary behaviors of people in Saudi Arabia. They added the
role of influencers should be monitored carefully by the ministry of health especially when it comes to
producing content on social media regarding food as it could lead to unhealthy diets. However, there is
less study in Malaysia when it comes to the relationship between the role of influencers and dietary
behaviors of young adults.

Futhermore, research by Turner and Lefevre (2017) found that body dissatisfaction are linked to the
influence of these micro-celebrities (SMIs). The result of their study showed positive relationship
between the usage of social media and eating disorders among young adults and in some serious cases,
it had actually led to orthorexia nervosa – a compulsion of eating healthily, which eventually led to
excessive weight loss and is linked to depression. Hence, this study proved even though SMIs have
positive impact on brand image and companies, it might not be the same in some cases. Thus, Turner and
Lefevre proved there is a relation between social media influencers and eating disorders among young
adults. This can be supported by Wayles (2020) where researcher proved the relationship between
Instagram and eating disorders among young adults.

Along with it, based on Alruwaily et al. (2020) study, children influencers created millions of unhealthy
dietary choices perceptions by commercial advertising. The research conducted in America found that
the young SMIs YouTube channel featuring them eating unhealthy food like McDonald’s were
collectively viewed more than 48 billion times. Based on the result of the study, through watching the
children influencers digesting unhealthy food on YouTube, it actually persuaded the young viewers
into adapting to the same unhealthy lifestyles. Hence, again, the study proved that young SMIs have
the power on influencing childrens’ dietary choices. However, there is still less study in Sabah regarding
the social media influencers impact on university students’ dietary choices.

The study aims to understand Universiti Malaysia Sabah students’ attitudes and norms towards the
social media influencers on their dietary choices, the researcher will be attempting to grasp a better
understanding from the perspectives of the students, studying specifically on how their intention is
affected by the above variables. The theory of reasoned action predicts behavioral intention which
actually acts as a middle ground between estimating attitudes and actually predicts behaviour. The
theory analyses the problems that limit the influence of attitudes as the behavioural intention actually
differ from behaviour. Thus, the theory helps researcher to predict the behaviour of students based on
their attitudes and norms towards the SMIs

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Methodology

In this paper, all variable’s measures are developed on existing measurements established from prior
scholars. The measures from the Theory of Reasoned Action were validated in this research along with
the lists of questions provided by Skylie Galea’s research on Social Media Influencers on Purchase
Decision in 2020. The measurement constructs involved attitude, subjective norm and behavioural
intention. The questionnaire was also adapted and modified with the accordance of Azjen and
Fishbein’s 1975 Theory of Reasoned Action.

A five-point likert scale were applied on measuring students’ attitude and subjective norm on social
media influencers on their dietary choices based on the Theory of Reasoned Action. The five-point
likert scale ranging from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’ was established in this study.
Researchers claimed that the five-point liker scale would decrease the respondents’ frustration level of
patient while increasing rate of response and quality (Sachdev & Verma, 2004). The theory is also
utilized in investigating the behavioral intention of students as well.

A total of 100 online questionnaires were distributed to the final year students in Universiti
Malaysia Sabah. However, only 82 questionnaires were returned. Based on the G*Power sample size
analysis for the study, the required sample size for the present study is 74 and researcher received a total
of 82 responses. Thus, the present study sample size of 82 is acceptable and appropriate for further data
analysis.

The final sample of the study consist of 82 respondents where 28.0% of them were male and the
remaining 72.0% were female. 81.7% (67 respondents) of them were in the age range of 21-23 years
old while 18.3% (15 respondents) of them were between 24-26 years old.

The ethnicity of the respondents is randomly selected from different background. 64.6% (53
respondents) were Bumiputera Sabah, 9.8% (8 respondents) were Bumiputera Sarawak, 3.7% (3
respondents) were Chinese, 20.7% (17 respondents) were Malay and the remaining 1.2% (1
respondent) were Indian. When it comes to respondents’ residency, 68.3% (56 respondents) of them
were non-resident and the remaining 31.7% (26 respondents) were residential.

Result

Social Media Influencers and Dietary Choices

Table 1 indicates the frequency and valid percentage of the items regarding the role of social media
influencers and the dietary choices of respondents.

Table 1: Role of SMIs and Dietary Choices of Students

Items Categories Frequency Valid

Percentage
Do you follow any social Yes 81 98.8%
media influencers? No 1 1.2%
Instagram 74 90.2%
Which social media platforms do you Facebook 46 56.1%
follow them on? YouTube 44 53.7%
TikTok 33 40.2%
Twitter 24 29.3%
Do you believe to have Yes 80 97.6%
healthy dietary choices? No 2 2.4%

Based on the table, 98.8% of respondents said yes to following the social media influencers on social
media. 90.2% of the respondents chose Instagram as the social media platform that they follow them
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on, 56.1% chose Facebook, 53.7% chose YouTube, 40.2% TikTok and 29.3% chose Twitter.
Consequently, 97.6% said yes when asked whether they believe to have healthy dietary choices and
the remaining 2.4% said no.

Correlation Analysis

Pearson correlation coefficient analysis is computed in SPSS in order to rest the strength and the
direction of the relationship among the entire attribute of the study. When the correlation value is
r=0.10 to 0.29 or r=-0.10 to -0.29, it is regarded little or weak; when the value is r=0.30 to 0.49 or r=-
0.10 to - 0.29, it is considered medium or moderate; and when the value is r=0.50 to 1.0 or r=-0.50 to -
1.0, it is recognised large or strong. The values of Pearson correlation coefficients range from -1.00 to
+1.00. A value of +1.00 signifies a high positive correlation, a value of -1.00 means negative
correlation, and a value of 0.00 indicates that there is no linear relationship between two variables
(Pallant, 2007).

According to Table 2, the results indicate that the construct of attitude is positively and moderately
correlated with behavioural intent due to its correlation coefficient values which is 1.000. Meanwhile,
the construct of subjective norms also showed positively and moderately correlated with behavioural
intent with coefficient values of .452

Table 2: Correlation Analysis of study variables

Dependent Variable Independent Variable Correlation Significance (1- df

tailed)
Behavioural Intention Attitude 1.000 .249 0
Subjective .452 .000 79
Norms

The Relationship between Attitude and Behavioral Intent

The first hypothesis (H1) investigates whether there is a significant relationship between the attitude of
students towards social media influencers and their behavioural intent on their dietary choices. It
specified that there is no significant relationship between the attitude of students and their behavioural
intent on their dietary choices (β = .110, p <0.05). Therefore, hypothesis (H1) is rejected.

The Relationship between Subjective Norms and Behavioral Intent

The second hypothesis (H2) investigates whether there is a significant relationship between the
subjective norm towards the social media influencers and the students’ dietary choices. Thus, for the
second hypothesis (H2), there is a significant relationship between subjective norms and behavioural
intent (β=.721, p < 0.05). Therefore, hypothesis (H2) is accepted.

The study's results and findings were presented in this chapter. The result of the reliability analysis as
well as the descriptive analysis were provided. Moreover, the corelation and regression analysis of the
subjective norms on the influencers were significant.

Conclusion

The intention of this study was to investigate students’ attitude and subjective norms on social media
influencers among the final year students in Universiti Malaysia Sabah. Furthermore, this study also
investigates the relationship between social media influencers and students’ behavioural intent on their
dietary choices. Therefore, in completion of this study, the three research questions are as follows:
i. Does attitude on social media influencers have significant relationship
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ii. with students’ behavioural intent on their dietary choices?

iii. Does subjective norms on social media influencers have significant

iv. relationship with students’ behavioural intent on their dietary choices?
v. What is the role of social media influencers and students’ dietary
vi. choices?

The discussion looks into the following research issues relating to; (1) the students’ attitude on social
media influencers with the behavioural intent on their dietary choices, (2) their subjective norms on
social media influencers with the behavioural intent on their dietary choices, and (3) the role of social
media influencers with the dietary choices of students.

The relationship between students’ attitude on social media influencers and their
behavioral intent

According to the literature on attitude, the degree to which a person has a good or bad assessment of a
certain conduct is linked to as their attitude (Bada & Sasse, 2014). The concept of attitude is also
referred to as cognitive because according to expert, memories can build up a person’s attitude (Eagly &
Chaiken, 1993). The present study focuses on the attitude of students on the social media influencers
towards the behavioural intent on their dietary choices. To date, there is still little research conducted
on this area.

In the process of correlation analysis, the attributes of attitude were computed in SPSS to determine
the relationship between attitude and students’ behavioural intent. The findings of this study indicated
that the construct of attitude is positively and moderately correlated with behavioural intent. This
indicated that there is a relationship between the attitude of students on social media influencers
towards their behavioural intent on their dietary choices, however, the relationship indicates only a
moderate relationship between the variables.

In the process of regression analysis to analyse the direct relationship between attitude and behavioural
intent, the constructs of attitude were also computed through the means of SPSS. With that, findings
showed that there is no significant relationship between the attitude of students on social media
influencers and their behavioural intent on their dietary choices. Thus, the present study first
hypothesis is rejected. According to Wang et al. (2017), the facts that social media influencers
disseminate has the potential to impact people's beliefs, behaviours, and attitudes. However, for this
present study, findings indicated that social media influencers do not have enough impact on the
attitude of the final year Communication students in Universiti Malaysia Sabah regarding their dietary
choices.

The relationship between students’ subjective norms and their behavioral intent

Based on literature, subjective norms imply to a feeling of duty to act in a certain manner (Lokhorst,
2009). Subjective norms refer to a person recognizing what another person believe about a particular
behaviour, hence, that behaviour of that person is influenced. The present study focuses on the subjective
norms of students on the social media influencers where their behavioural intent on their dietary
choices is investigated.

In the process of correlation analysis, the findings of the study indicates that the construct of subjective
norm is positively and moderately correlated with behavioral intent. This showed subjective norm in
this study has a relationship on the social media influencers towards their behavioural intent though
result showed only moderate relationship.

Furthermore, in the process of regression analysis through the means of SPPS, the findings showed that
there is a significant relationship between subjective norms and behavioural intent. Thus, the second
hypothesis of the present study is accepted. Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) believed that another people’s

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opinion on a particular subject will dictate how the other person behave. In other words, people are
inclined to the social pressure to behavein a certain way.

Based on this study, the final year students are pressured by the social norms to behave in a certain way.
In this case, their behavioural intent on their dietary choices is influenced by their subjective norms
towards the social media influencers. Bada and Sasse (2014) believed that people engage in a certain
behaviour if their peers do the same, and for this study, it is proven that subjective norms play a
significant role in shaping students’ behavioral intent.

The role of social media influencers and students’ dietary choices

According to the literature on social media influencers, Lu et al. (2012) mentioned them as
someone who acquire the skills of a strong social influence where people who possess such skills can
convince people to alter their values, behaviours and actions (Gass, 2015). Prior research showed that
the social media influencers influenced the lives of young adults to the point they can shape their
identity as well (Loff, 2020). In this study, the role of social media influencers toward students in
Universiti Malaysia Sabah is investigated. Based on the findings of the study, 98.8% of the
respondents subscribe to social media influencers on their social media accounts. This finding
alone indicated that the students’ live are impacted by them. Furthermore, most of them follow the
social media influencers on every social media platform: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok
and Twitter. However, Instagram is the most used social media platform to subscribe to them.

Based on existing literature, the daily choices of an individual on the type of food they consumed are
called dietary choices (Preedy and Watson, 2010). Prior research found out that they found constant
positive relationship between the use of social media and disordered eating (Holland & Tiggeman,
2016). The dietary choices of students are generally bad as they are more inclined to consume less
vegetables and fruits (Deshpande et al., 2009). Sogari et al. (2018) found that university students
mostly have poor eating habits. In this study, the dietary choices of students are investigated. However,
based on the findings of the study, 97.6% of the students believed that they have healthy dietary
choices.

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