The Price of Monetization: Exploring Audience Engagement with Commercialized Science Influencers

Influencers who focus on science content act as important communicators in informal science engagement, yet they face a critical sustainability challenge that pushes them toward commercialization. This creates a fundamental tension between economic viability and scientific credibility. This study investigates how commercialization impacts audience engagement with science influencers on the short-video platform Douyin. Using a dataset of 47,879 videos from 941 science influencers, we employ generalized linear mixed-effects models to analyze the effects of embedded product links on user engagement (collections, comments, and likes). We further examine the moderating roles of two key factors: the influencer's established commercial value (i.e., marketing tier) and the contextual alignment between the video's content and the promoted product (i.e., video-good compatibility). Our findings reveal a significant "engagement penalty": commercialized videos receive substantially fewer high-commitment engagements (collections and comments). This penalty is amplified for influencers with a higher marketing tier. Counter-intuitively, higher video-good compatibility is also associated with lower engagement. These results suggest that commercialization triggers aversions among audiences by making selling motives salient, which undermines the audience engagement essential for science communication. The findings highlight the central challenge for science influencers: navigating the delicate balance between financial sustainability and the audience trust that underpins their educational mission.