Getting Liberals and Conservatives to Go Green: Political Ideology and Congruent Appeals

Abstract

The authors develop a conceptual model of how the congruence of political ideology and persuasive appeals enhances sustainable behaviors. In study 1, persuasive appeals consistent with individualizing and binding moral foundations were developed to enhance liberal and conservative recycling. In study 2, individualizing and binding appeals were tested on actual recycling behavior using a longitudinal field study to demonstrate the effectiveness of messages congruent with the moral foundations of liberals and conservatives. Study 3 demonstrated that enhanced fluency represents the underlying psychological process that mediates the relationship between message congruence and intentions. Moreover, study 3 established that spillover effects resulting from increased intentions to engage in sustainable disposition behavior enhance intentions to engage in sustainable acquisition and consumption behaviors. Finally, study 4 ruled out potential message confounds to demonstrate the robustness of the findings. Practical implications for marketers and public policy officials interested in increasing sustainable behaviors are offered.

How do we Optimize Message Matching Interventions? Identifying Matching Thresholds, and Simultaneously Matching to Multiple Characteristics

“…For example, a study may randomly allocate people to view either a liberally-oriented or a conservatively-oriented message, and then define matching in direct proportion to each person's political ideology (e.g., operationalizing a liberal message as a stronger match the stronger a person's leaning towards a liberal ideology; Kidwell, Farmer, & Hardesty, 2013). Importantly, this type of design makes no assumption about matching thresholds and can instead be used to directly estimate their values.…”

Conscientious consumers: a relationship between moral foundations, political orientation and sustainable consumption

“…In general terms, political ideology is commonly measured on a continuum polarised as left (liberal) or right (conservative) and this orientation has been shown to be both parsimonious and to exhibit strong predictive validity in relation to attitudes towards social issues (Jost 2006) and demonstrates good test-re-test reliability and predictive validity (Khan, Misra and Singh 2013). Graham et al (2009) demonstrate that the left-right distinction is valid for predicting individual behaviour and according to Kidwell et al (2013) while the distinction between a left and right political orientation is an abstract construct, it has been used accurately to characterise political views in a wide range of cultural contexts (e.g. in the United Kingdom, liberal and conservative; in the United States of America, republican and democrat).…”

Making Sense from (Apparent) Senselessness: The JCR Lens

“…Consumer research has further established that motivated reasoning could underpin truthiness, such that people tend to believe findings that correspond to their prior beliefs based on political ideology, and tend to be more persuaded by them (Kidwell, Farmer, and Hardesty 2013). Consumer culture researchers have also identified how pervasive cultural discourses influence what consumers take to be true: they can shape consumers' interpretation of information they receive and influence whether they search for additional information (e.g., Fischer, Otnes, and Tuncay 2007).…”