Green Demarketing to Nongreen Consumers: Individuals With Low Environmental Concern Don’t Believe Messages to “Buy Less”
研究发现，绿色反营销信息（鼓励少买）会因来源可信度和信息可信度降低购买意愿，且该效应受消费者环境关注度调节，低环境关注者更不相信此类信息。
Traditional advertising stimulates consumer demand for goods and services, and green advertising promotes responsible consumption. Green advertising has evolved to move beyond promoting green consumption to even more progressive messages that encourage less buying of any kind of product. Such messages can be termed “Green Demarketing.” Previous research has cautioned that GD can generate negative consumer responses for product-related advertising. The present research builds on this significant finding to probe into the psychological processes – how and when – behind the observed effect. Source credibility and message believability emerge as mediating mechanisms, establishing a critical link between the two that influences purchase intention. This observed effect is moderated by environmental concern, an individual-level construct that differentially affects the resonance of green demarketing messages. A set of online experiments and a real-world field experiment test the hypotheses, and the results offer immediate and tangible recommendations for brands, nonprofit organizations, and social media influencers. This research explores an area of paramount attention as environmental resources become scarcer in the face of increasing consumption.