When Influencers Delegate Replies: How Social AI Agents Shape User Engagement

The authors gratefully thank the senior editor, the associate editor, and anonymous reviewers for their constructive advice and guidance. Financial support for this work was provided by the McIntire School of Commerce Foundation and the Thriving Youth in Digital Environment (TYDE) initiative at the University of Virginia. The authors also appreciate valuable feedback received from seminar participants at the University of British Columbia, Temple University, and the Virginia Research Seminar Series, as well as attendees at Business and GenAI Workshop (Wharton Human–AI Research), the Fisher AI in Business Conference (Ohio State University), the Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Business Analytics (Columbia University), the AI in Management Conference (USC), and the BizAI Conference (Dallas).