The interplay between endorser social status and normative appeals on the endorsement effectiveness of pro-environmental behaviors

Abstract

Employing message endorser is a popular strategy in encouraging consumers to protect the environment. This research explores how the social status of endorsers and the forms of normative messages can influence the effectiveness of endorsement for pro-environmental behaviors. Drawing on the focus theory of normative conduct and the match-up hypothesis, the authors propose that the effects of endorser social status on consumers’ responses to green advertising are contingent on whether the normative messages is framed as injunctive norms or descriptive norms. In three experiments, the results indicate that participants show more positive attitudes toward the advertisement and higher intentions to act environmentally friendly when endorsers with high social status are presented in combination with injunctive norm appeals. In contrast, ordinary consumer endorsers produce stronger impact on attitudes and behavioral intentions when descriptive norm appeals are used. These findings show that marketers using endorsers to promote pro-environmental behaviors should develop normative message accordingly.

Meet Bob and Offset Your Flight: Optimising Explainer Videos to Promote Voluntary Carbon Offsetting

“…Studies on exemplars have shown that exemplars can increase the positive effects of majority SNAs (Elgaaied-Gambier et al, 2018;He et al, 2019). More specifically, when promoting environmentally friendly behaviour, Elgaaied-Gambier et al (2018) showed that the presence of an exemplar in a message including a majority DSNA has a direct positive influence on the intention to purchase non-overpackaged products.…”

“…Overall, such SNAs are promising because they are subtle, low-cost, and effective in encouraging compliance (Rhodes et al, 2020;Yamin et al, 2019). Nevertheless, in the specific context of sustainable behaviour, there are very few studies combining the use of exemplars and SNAs, which do not use videos but printed information (Elgaaied-Gambier et al, 2018;He et al, 2019;Huber et al, 2018). However, Rhodes et al (2020) concluded that SNAs might be more effective in promoting sustainable behaviour when embedded in audio-visual material than in text-based stimuli.…”

“…H6: An explainer video including a majority ISNA in combination with a dynamic minority DSNA will improve persuasive outcomes compared with an explainer video with a combination of majority ISNA and static minority DSNA. Furthermore, He et al (2019) suggested that showing ordinary consumer endorsers, such as "Bob," leads to stronger persuasive outcomes when using dynamic DSNAs than when using ISNAs. However, they operationalised their ISNA via a direct behavioural appeal ("every student should save energy") and not by specifying a proportion of people.…”

Three decades of green advertising – a review of literature and bibliometric analysis

“…Content of advertising claims and appeals – Maximum research was found to be done on this topic. It included studies of types of appeals (Green and Peloza, 2014; Matthes et al , 2014; Jaeger and Weber, 2020), celebrity endorsements in green advertising (He et al , 2019) and use of text, color and visuals in green advertisements (Spack et al , 2012; Song and Luximon, 2019; Martinez et al , 2020).…”

Hypotheses for the Reasons behind Beer Consumer’s Willingness to Purchase Beer: An Expanded Theory from a Planned Behavior Perspective

“…Injunctive norms refer to the degree of social approval or disapproval of the act [ 28 ]. Through people’s perceptions, injunctive norms determine whether a particular behavior is socially acceptable or not [ 29 ]. Descriptive norms are based on a view of what other people usually do, providing information regarding what seems to be the most appropriate behavior [ 30 ].…”