What motivates crypto likes? How assessment regulatory mode increases social media engagement with crypto assets

Abstract Consumer engagement with social media posts is extensively examined in the marketing literature, yet the motivations behind engagement with high‐risk financial and digital assets, such as cryptocurrencies, remain unclear. This research explores what drives consumers to engage with social media posts about crypto assets like Bitcoin. Utilizing regulatory mode theory, we demonstrate across four studies that assessment language (motivating thought) versus locomotion (motivating action) increases social media engagement with crypto assets. In two field studies analyzing social media ( N = 194,098 posts), we find that assessment results in more Facebook likes on posts about crypto assets. Additionally, two online experiments ( N = 1661) establish a causal, positive relationship between assessment language and consumer liking intentions, mediated by perceived investment volatility, cognitive engagement, and positive affect. Managers should use assessment words like “think” and “compare” when communicating about crypto on social media and can leverage our dictionary to identify crypto terms in large text data sets.