How can hotels’ green advertising be persuasive to consumers? An information processing perspective

Abstract

With the recent pushes for reducing environmental impacts, hotels have changed their advertising strategies from selling product or service benefits to promoting eco-friendly business practices. Viewing green advertising as a primary CSR marketing practice of hotels, this study examined the effects of green marketing cause and ad appeal types on consumer perceptions, and the procedural mechanism (perceptions, attitudes, persuasion, and behavioral intentions) with regards to consumers’ ad responses. Using an experimental design involving fictitious ads, we examined the impacts of cause and appeal types on consumer perceptions, while controlling for an environmental consciousness level. Based on a sample of 711 US consumers, the result showed that ads using a public-serving cause generated more positive affective perceptions, while a hard-sell appeal generated more positive cognitive ones. The result further showed that affective and cognitive perceptions positively influenced affective and cognitive attitudes toward the ad (Aad), respectively, and these attitudes led to persuasion and behavioral intentions. The result also showed that cognitive ad attitude as a partial mediator between affective ad attitude and persuasion made a stronger influence on persuasion than affective ad attitude did. This study provides practical implications to hotel marketers in tailoring green advertising strategies to improve communication with consumers.