You Shall (Not) Fear

Abstract

Purpose In the age of transparency, nonprofit organizations have attempted to raise awareness of unethical business practices through diverse social media platforms, putting firms under great pressure to incorporate sustainability in their operations. Focusing on the issue of animal cruelty which is a relatively under-investigated topic in the fashion industry, the purpose of this paper is to examine how different levels of animal cruelty depicted in nonprofit organizations’ ethical consumption campaigns influence viewers’ negative emotions and lead to their supportive behavior and ethical consumption intention. Design/methodology/approach In the main study, undergraduate students (n=82) from a big public University in the USA were recruited in exchange for extra credit and randomly assigned to one of the three experimental conditions of animal cruelty in a single-factor, three-level, between-subjects experimental design: non-threatening condition (n=26), low-threatening condition (n=27) and high-threatening condition (n=29). Findings The results indicated that the levels of negative emotional arousal are positively related to levels of perceived animal cruelty in social media campaigns. In addition, negative emotional arousal mediates the effect of perceived animal cruelty on the intention of supportive behavior, but no mediation effect on ethical consumption intention was found. Additionally, the findings of this study revealed that the indirect effect of perceived animal cruelty on supportive behavior intention is moderated by participants’ moral justification such as the reality of economic development and government dependency. Originality/value The findings of this study contribute to the literature by advancing the current understanding of the role of negative emotional images in ethical consumption campaigns in the context of animal cruelty in the fashion industry.