The “Green Persuasion Effect” of Negative Messages: How and When Message Framing Influences Tourists’ Environmentally Responsible Behavior
通过五项实验发现，负面框架的环保提醒比正面框架更能提升游客的环境责任行为，且社会阶层调节该效应：负面框架对低阶层游客更有效，正面框架对高阶层游客更有效。
Tourist activities may harm the environment, making tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior particularly important in tourism research. This research investigates the persuasion effect of message framing in environmental protection reminders on environmentally responsible behavior. Through five studies employing both field and controlled experiments and different measures of environmentally responsible behavior across varied tourism scenarios, we demonstrate that negatively (vs. positively) framed messages more effectively increase environmentally responsible behavior. Specifically, negatively framed messages are more effective in enhancing tourists’ environmental awareness, which triggers more environmentally responsible behavior. Furthermore, we identify social class as a moderator of message framing effectiveness, showing that negatively framed messages are more persuasive for lower-class tourists, whereas positively framed messages are more persuasive for upper-class tourists. These findings advance knowledge on message framing and tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior, reconcile prior research, and offer practical guidance for destinations to encourage environmentally responsible behavior among tourists.