SOCIAL MEDIA TAX AWARENESS CAMPAIGNS AND DIGITAL TAX COMPLIANCE INTENTION AMONG BUSINESS EDUCATION GRADUATES IN ANAMBRA STATE: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF TAX KNOWLEDGE
Abstract
The digitalization of tax administration in developing economies has intensified reliance on social media platforms as instruments for taxpayer education; however, the cognitive mechanisms through which such campaigns translate awareness into behavioral compliance intention remain empirically underexplored. This study examined the influence of social media tax awareness campaigns on the digital tax compliance intention of Business Education graduates in Anambra State, Nigeria, with tax knowledge investigated as a mediating variable. A cross-sectional survey design was adopted, and data were collected from 341 proportionately stratified participants across four public tertiary institutions using a validated 8-item Likert-scale instrument. Hayes’ PROCESS Macro Model 4, executed with 5,000 bootstrap resamples, was employed for analysis. Results revealed that social media tax awareness campaigns exerted a significant positive direct effect on digital tax compliance intention (β = 0.528, p < .001); among other findings, tax knowledge partially mediated this relationship, with a statistically significant indirect effect (β = 0.164; 95% CI [0.114, 0.221]). The study concluded that the behavioral effectiveness of social media tax campaigns depends not only on message visibility but critically on the functional tax knowledge transferred to recipients. It was recommended, among others, that the Anambra State Internal Revenue Service should design skill-oriented, platform-specific digital tax literacy campaigns targeting young graduates to strengthen compliance readiness.
Keywords: social media tax campaigns, digital tax compliance intention, tax knowledge, mediation analysis, Business Education graduates
Stella, N. Okafor and Ogochukwu, A. Okafor
Department of Commerce and Cooperative Education, School of Business Education, Federal College of Education (Technical), Umunze