Promoting eco-friendly advertising on social media: the fit between appeals and tie strength

Abstract

Social media has become a popular platform for eco-friendly advertising. However, little is known about how a social media platform as a context influences the effectiveness of eco-friendly advertising. This study posits that the right match between eco-friendly advertising appeal and social media type can enhance advertising effectiveness. We initially divide social media into strong and weak tie types, where the core value of the former is to help individuals strengthen existing relationships and build closer connections with friends, and the latter helps individuals build infrequent and loose relationships with others. Two experiments are conducted to investigate the matching effect between eco-friendly ad appeal and social media type by applying two pairs of strong-weak-tie social media. The results suggest that people on strong-tie social media respond more favorably to eco-friendly advertising in concrete appeals than abstract appeals, whereas people on weak-tie social media exhibit more positive responses when abstract appeals are used. This matching effect is driven by processing fluency. These findings can help managers improve the effectiveness and efficiency of eco-friendly advertising decisions on social media.