Profiling Environmental Leaders Among Social Influencers: Perspectives of Social Followers

Abstract

Opinion leaders or social influencers possess the conviction of their followers in making personal and professional decisions. Their posts or sharing on social media may strongly influence their followers’ decision to practise some environmental actions in their daily lives. They are often labelled as the current thought leaders among the Millennials. Considering the critical environmental issues faced, many social influencers play important roles to show their willingness to change human destructive behaviours and conserve the environment for the future. Realising their influence on their followers, these environmental influencers relentlessly encourage their followers to support their missions. Thus, the study attempted to profile successful environmental leaders among social influencers from the views of their followers. The study was a qualitative multiple case study on five informants. The informants volunteered to participate and were from 100 university students. They were interviewed in a written semi-structured interview and researchers could reach them if clarification was needed. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Peer debriefing was used to increase trustworthiness. The findings revealed that effective environmental leaders possessed these criteria: a) credibility; b) generosity; c) responsible creators; d) influential figures; e) trust builders. The informants believed that these social influencers are as real as offline leaders even though they only knew these social influencers in online contexts. The ability of environmental social influencers to reach and convince multiple audiences to participate and support various environmental initiatives via social media platforms made them powerful thought leaders.