{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,6]],"date-time":"2026-06-06T05:03:31Z","timestamp":1780722211913,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":35,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"6","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,4]],"date-time":"2026-06-04T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1780531200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"National Social Science Fund of China","award":["21BGL128"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["21BGL128"]}]},{"name":"Guangdong Graduate Education Innovation Program Project \u201cJinan University-Shunfei Science and Technology Joint Graduate Training Demonstration Base\u201d"},{"name":"Guangdong Provincial Undergraduate Teaching Reform Project, \u201cGuangdong Brand Storytelling: A Practical Exploration Based on the Course Strategic Brand Management\u201d"},{"name":"Guangdong College Students\u2019 Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program","award":["S202610559125"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["S202610559125"]}]},{"name":"Guangdong College Students\u2019 Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program","award":["S202610559192X"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["S202610559192X"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["JTAER"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Personalized advertising is now routine in digital commerce and new media, but relevance does not always translate into acceptance. When consumers read tailored messages as signs of tracking or inference rather than as useful assistance, they may feel exposed and avoid the advertising. Drawing on advertising avoidance theory, privacy calculus theory, and control agency theory, this study examines a privacy-risk account of personalized advertising avoidance. Survey data from 502 consumers and structural equation modeling show that privacy concern, privacy fatigue, and prior negative experiences are directly associated with advertising avoidance. Privacy concern, prior negative experiences, and perceived personalization are also positively associated with perceived risk; perceived industry self-regulation is negatively but non-significantly associated with perceived risk; and perceived risk is positively associated with advertising avoidance. These results position perceived risk as a close downstream appraisal through which consumers make sense of data-driven targeting. The study contributes to digital commerce and interactive marketing research by showing that consumers evaluate personalized advertising not only as a cue of relevance, but also as a possible source of privacy vulnerability. It also offers implications for transparent targeting, visible user control, platform governance, and less intrusive personalization.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/jtaer21060178","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,4]],"date-time":"2026-06-04T07:36:28Z","timestamp":1780558588000},"page":"178","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["When Relevance Feels Risky: Consumer Avoidance of Personalized Advertising in the Digital Age"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"21","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7573-1236","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yunbo","family":"Chen","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Journalism and Communication, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jing","family":"Huang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Foreign Studies, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9647-2269","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yin","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hongkong 999077, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yixiang","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd., Shenzhen 518000, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,4]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"183","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jbusres.2021.03.061","article-title":"A broad overview of interactive digital marketing: A bibliometric network analysis","volume":"131","author":"Krishen","year":"2021","journal-title":"J. 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