With the development and maturity of Internet technology, online behavioral advertising has gradually emerged as an important tool for personalized marketing. However, how to enhance users’ acceptance of such advertising and improve its effectiveness remains a pressing issue, with relatively limited research in this area. Therefore, this study starts with the perception characteristics of online behavioral advertising and constructs a research model based on the Protection Motivation Theory and Theory of Reasoned Action. Based on the analysis of 351 valid questionnaires using SPSS 25. 0 and AMOS 18. 0 for reliability, validity, and regression analysis, the study further employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to explore the configurational effects of these perception characteristics on user acceptance. The regression analysis reveals that privacy concerns and perceived intrusiveness negatively impact users’ acceptance intention, while personalization and other perception characteristics positively influence it. Advertising attitude is found to mediate the relationship between advertising perception characteristics and user acceptance intention. The fsQCA results indicate that none of the five perception characteristics is a necessary condition for user acceptance; instead, they interact in combinations, and there are four combinations of characteristics that lead to high user acceptance intention.