Battle of the E-cowarriors: Differential effects of environmental appeals by influencers and organizations on youth's pro-environmental attitudes and behavior intentions

Environmental social media influencers (SMIs)—or ‘greenfluencers’—nowadays receive considerable scholarly and public attention. Yet, SMIs' persuasive power compared to institutional sources like environmental nonprofit organizations (ENPOs) on social media remains uninvestigated. We address this gap with a pre-registered between-subjects experiment ( N = 269) among 16-to-25-year-olds from Belgium using real SMIs and ENPOs. We find that both sources affect pro-environmental outcomes, but via different mechanisms and among different groups. ENPOs are perceived as more trustworthy, which translates to higher pro-environmental attitudes and behavior intentions. SMIs affect pro-environmental behavior intentions via wishful identification and perceived similarity—yet only among women with higher environmental concern. Both sources stimulate pro-environmental outcomes via perceptions of attainability. Finally, SMIs' effects on pro-environmental outcomes are not fully explained by these source perceptions, which points to the necessity to study additional mechanisms. Overall, our findings illuminate important boundary conditions and mechanisms of newfangled pro-environmental persuasion via social media. • Both influencers and organizations have the power to influence youth's environmental attitudes and behavior intentions. • Organizations affect environmental outcomes among young people via trustworthiness. • Influencers increase intentions via wishful identification and similarity—yet only among women with higher concern. • Perceived attainability of environmental actors on social media drives pro-environmental outcomes among young people. • Highly concerned users can have increased behavior intentions after one-time exposure to an environmental appeal.