Promoting Conservation Intentions Through Humanized Messaging in Green Advertisements: The Mediation Roles of Empathy and Responsibility

Plastic waste accumulation is a pressing environmental challenge that demands interdisciplinary solutions. This study investigated whether humanized messaging in green advertisements increases consumers’ conservation intentions. Grounded in self-expansion theory and dual-process theory, we propose a serial mediation model that integrates affective (empathy) and cognitive (perceived responsibility) pathways to explain conservation behavior in humanized environmental campaigns. We conducted a scenario-based experiment (N = 505) to test these mechanisms. Green ads that humanize marine animals significantly increased empathy, perceived responsibility, and conservation intentions. Moreover, the effect of humanized messaging on conservation intentions was sequentially mediated by heightened empathy, which in turn strengthened perceived responsibility. As a pioneering study aiming to propose and empirically test the affective–cognitive pathway, our work provides novel insights into how emotional and rational processes jointly shape environmental decision-making. The findings advance theory on consumers’ conservation behavior and provide actionable guidance for enterprises and policymakers to design evidence-based initiatives for plastic waste reduction.