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Research on social media advertising reactance (SMAR) is in the early stages. This paper intends to present a full picture of SMAR studies, introduce a comprehensive theoretical model (the social media advertising reactance model, SMARM) and provide insights into research and practice.

This review adopts the concept-driven systematic review approach, identifying 92 articles from four primary academic databases – EBSCO, Elsevier, Web of Science and Google Scholar.

First, this review offers overviews of five topics: publication trends, the journals publishing research, research methodology, targeted platform and the main theories. Second, based on the framework of psychological reactance, this study proposes the SMARM, identifying and elaborating on four components of the nomological relationship to SMAR: related concepts, antecedents, moderators and consequences.

This research has implications for advertisers, social media platform operators and policymakers by providing a whole picture of SMAR. Moreover, the SMARM could guide the stakeholders to adopt a user-friendly advertising design for the sustainable development of social media advertising (SMA).

By presenting an up-to-date review of SMAR-related research, this paper contributes to the literature of social media, advertising and marketing. Through a comparison with traditional advertising, this paper makes the characteristics of SMA clear. Meanwhile, the SMARM is developed to systematically elaborate on all related elements of SMAR and explain their underlying causal relationships. Future research directions are proposed.