虚拟代言人逐渐成为品牌推广中的新兴工具。尽管已有许多研究关注虚拟代言人的营销效果，但对其在社会利益诉求情境中的表现却少有探讨。本研究聚焦于此情境，探讨虚拟代言人代言社会利益产品对消费者购买意愿的影响。通过三项实验发现，在社会利益诉求广告中，虚拟代言人（相较于人类代言人）会降低消费者的购买意愿，而在个人利益诉求广告中则并无显著影响。进一步分析显示，这一负面影响源于消费者对虚拟代言人的外群体认知，它削弱了消费者对虚拟代言人的共同内群体身份认同感。此外，本研究发现，提升消费者的人类-虚拟人共存感知或采用信息型说服策略，能够缓解虚拟代言人带来的负面影响。本研究不仅拓展了虚拟代言人在不同广告诉求情境下的应用场景，探索了其影响机制，还提出了改善虚拟代言人营销效果的策略，为品牌管理实践提供了参考。

Virtual influencers are increasingly becoming a novel tool in brand promotion. Although numerous studies had examined the marketing effects of virtual influencers, their performance in social-benefit appeal contexts remains underexplored. This study focuses on this specific context to investigate the impact of virtual influencers promoting social-benefit products on consumers’ purchase intentions. Across three experiments, we find that in advertisements with social-benefit appeals, virtual influencers (compared to human influencers) reduce consumers’ purchase intentions, while no significant difference was observed in personal-benefit appeal contexts. Further analysis reveals that this negative effect stems from consumers’ perception of virtual influencers as out-group members, which diminishes their perception of common in-group identity with the virtual endorser. Additionally, the study finds that increasing consumers’ perceived human-virtual being coexistence or employing informational (vs. normative) persuasion strategies can mitigate the negative impact of virtual influencers. This research not only extends the application scope of virtual influencers across different advertising appeal contexts and explores the underlying mechanisms of their effects, but also proposes strategies to enhance the marketing effectiveness of virtual influencers, providing guidance for brand management practice.