Vicarious moral satisfaction: how audiences make sense of green influencers’ prosocial content and disengage from action

Green influencers increasingly promote sustainability on social media, yet little is known about how audiences interpret green influencer content. Adopting an audience-centered perspective, this study examines how individuals construct their emotional and moral responses to green influencer content and how these interpretations shape perceived moral responsibility. Drawing on focus groups, in-depth interviews, and netnographic observations, we identify a recurring pattern through which audiences respond to prosocial influencer content. They express admiration and moral alignment while positioning themselves as behaviorally disengaged. We identify a three-stage process in which moral elevation, vicarious moral satisfaction, and responsibility shifting shape audience responses to prosocial influencer content. This study contributes to theory by introducing the concept of vicarious moral satisfaction and conceptualizing prosocial influencer engagement as a form of moral sensemaking, extending existing work on moral emotions and parasocial influence in digital advertising contexts. In practical terms, we show how moral engagement with prosocial communication may not translate into behavioral participation.