How Does Self-Construal Influence Green Product Purchase in the Digital Era? The Moderating Role of Advertising Appeal

Advertising has become an important strategy for many enterprises to nudge consumers to buy green products and achieve sustainable development. In the context of cultural diversity, the discussion on the influence of consumers’ cultural belief variables on the effectiveness of advertising persuasion appears conducive to promoting green consumption. Through two situational experiments based on information processing theory, this study verified the impact and mechanism of the interaction between self-construal and advertising appeals on green product purchase intention, revealing the mediating role of information processing fluency (Experiment 2). The results indicate that emotional (rational)-appeal advertisements can strengthen independent (interdependent) self-constructed consumers’ stronger purchase intentions for green products (Experiment 1). Moreover, the occurrence of this effect is mediated by information processing fluency (Experiment 2). Not only do the conclusions of this research enrich the literature in the field of self-construal and advertising appeal preference but they also have managerial implications for improving green marketing performance by using advertising appeal and targeting consumers’ cultural psychological characteristics.