The Role of Two-Way Influences on Sustaining Green Brand Engagement and Loyalty in Social Media

Abstract

In the current era, social media is changing how people interact with each other and their perceptions of branding, marketing, and commerce. Due to the growing concern about the sustainability of the environment and the wellbeing of societies, green marketing and branding are essential to reach these aims. Leveraging the power of brand pages in social media for green branding and impact are critical issues. This study is concerned with information influence, persuasiveness, adoption, and its impact on green page use engagement, especially on social media, such as Facebook. Based on the perspective of the Information Adoption Model (IAM) and Information Acceptance Model (IACM) that integrated theories from information influence and adoption, this study advances by identifying the antecedents of information usefulness and applying information adoption in the context of Facebook brand engagement. A questionnaire survey with 416 valid responses from Facebook fan page users is used. The hypotheses of the proposed model are tested using a structural equation model with AMOS software. The results show that: (1) Information and source credibility are two critical antecedents of information usefulness with different degrees of impact. (2) Information usefulness, brand engagement, and brand loyalty are found to have a significant cause-and-effect relationship. (3) Brand engagement is found to mediate the relationship between information usefulness and brand loyalty. (4) Enhancing information usefulness would improve customers’ brand loyalty to the brand pages. The significant findings of this study could provide insightful information on how to improve the engagement and loyalty of Facebook brand page users to sustain the benefits of green marketing.