The Influences of Perceived Green Advertising Value and Motivation Types on Green Purchasing Intention

Growing global concern over climate change and environmental degradation is significantly reshaping consumer behavior, driving a pronounced shift towards sustainable products and responsible consumption patterns. This trend is underscored by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 12, which aims to ensure sustainable consumption and production. However, progress towards SDG 12 remains a challenge, with recent reports indicating that only 40% of its targets are on track, while a concerning 60% have stalled or regressed. In Japan, the adoption of ethical consumption, which considers environmental and societal impacts, faces its own hurdles, with a recent survey revealing that a mere 27.4% of respondents are familiar with the term, and only 36.1% actively practice it, predominantly among older demographics. This situation highlights an urgent need for enhanced collaboration among stakeholders and more effective green communication strategies to accelerate the adoption of sustainable practices.

Green advertising has emerged as a primary tool for marketers to position products and services as environmentally friendly. These advertisements, which explicitly or implicitly highlight a product’s environmental attributes, promote sustainable lifestyles, or showcase a company’s commitment to environmental responsibility, play a crucial role in influencing consumer choices. Research consistently indicates that advertising’s impact on consumer behavior is contingent upon the perceived value consumers derive from it. Advertising value, a construct encompassing informativeness, entertainment, and credibility, significantly shapes how consumers perceive and respond to marketing messages. While previous studies have explored the link between advertising value and various consumer responses such as attitudes, purchase intentions, and ad avoidance, its specific role within the context of green purchasing remains an area ripe for deeper investigation.

Understanding consumer motivations is paramount to unraveling why environmentally friendly products, despite growing awareness, do not always translate into widespread purchase intent. Motivation, defined as the underlying reason for action, is a fundamental driver of behavior. In the realm of environmental consciousness, motivation acts as a critical bridge between personal values and pro-environmental actions. While intrinsic motivation, stemming from personal satisfaction, has been recognized as a key factor, the nuances of extrinsic motivations—driven by external rewards, social approval, guilt, personal values, or identity alignment—have been less thoroughly explored in the context of green advertising. Self-Determination Theory (SDT) provides a robust framework for understanding these diverse motivational types, yet its application to green advertising, particularly in dissecting how specific advertisements evoke different motivations, remains underexplored.

This study delves into these critical research gaps by examining how consumers’ perceived green advertising value influences various motivation types and, consequently, their intention to purchase green products. By integrating the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) model with SDT, the research posits that the "organism" component is not a singular internal state but rather a structured pathway of motivational internalization. This approach offers valuable process-level insights into the effectiveness of green advertising.

Key Findings from the Study

A comprehensive study involving 439 Japanese consumers, analyzed using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), has illuminated the intricate relationships between perceived green advertising value, consumer motivations, and green purchase intention. The findings underscore the significant role of diverse motivational factors in mediating the link between green advertising value and the intention to buy eco-friendly products. Notably, intrinsic motivation and integrated regulation emerged as powerful mediators, emphasizing the importance of fostering personal connections and identity alignment in green marketing efforts.

The research highlights that perceived green advertising value acts as a crucial stimulus, effectively shaping various motivational states in consumers. This, in turn, drives their intention to purchase green products. However, the study also reveals a critical nuance: while intrinsic motivation and integrated regulation strongly predict green purchase intention, introjected regulation—driven by guilt or obligation—demonstrated a lack of significant impact.

Understanding the Theoretical Framework

The study leverages the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) model, a well-established framework in environmental psychology and consumer behavior, to understand how external stimuli influence behavior. In this context, green advertising serves as the "Stimulus" (S). This stimulus acts upon the "Organism" (O), representing the internal psychological state of the consumer, which in this study is conceptualized through various motivation types derived from Self-Determination Theory (SDT). Finally, the "Response" (R) is the consumer’s green purchase intention.

Self-Determination Theory, developed by Deci and Ryan, categorizes human motivation along a continuum of self-determination. At one end lies intrinsic motivation, where individuals engage in activities for the inherent pleasure and satisfaction they provide. At the other end is amotivation, characterized by a lack of motivation. Extrinsic motivation falls in between, encompassing four distinct types of regulation:

• External Regulation: Behavior driven by external rewards or punishments, such as seeking social approval or avoiding criticism.
• Introjected Regulation: Internalized motivators like avoiding guilt, shame, or seeking self-esteem.
• Identified Regulation: Engaging in a behavior because it is personally meaningful and valued.
• Integrated Regulation: The most autonomous form of extrinsic motivation, where the behavior is fully aligned with an individual’s identity and core values.

The Japanese Context: Cultural Nuances in Green Consumption

The study’s focus on Japanese consumers provides valuable cross-cultural insights. Japan’s cultural dimensions, including high long-term orientation and uncertainty avoidance, influence consumer behavior. Long-term orientation suggests a focus on future rewards and sustainability, aligning well with the internalization of green practices. High uncertainty avoidance, on the other hand, can lead to a preference for clear information and a tendency to conform to established norms as a way to reduce perceived risk.

This cultural backdrop helps explain why integrated regulation and intrinsic motivation, which emphasize personal values and identity alignment, emerged as strong predictors of green purchase intention. Conversely, the lack of impact from introjected regulation (guilt-based motivation) can be attributed to a cultural preference for harmony and shared social expectations over individualistic feelings of guilt. In such a collectivistic society, pro-environmental actions are often embedded within broader social norms, making motives aligned with group expectations and personal values more resonant than those driven by individualistic shame or obligation.

Detailed Findings and Hypothesis Testing

The study formulated and tested ten hypotheses. Key findings include:

• Perceived Green Advertising Value and Motivation: Perceived green advertising value significantly and positively influenced all five motivational constructs: external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation, integrated regulation, and intrinsic motivation. This supports Hypotheses 1 through 5, indicating that valuable green advertising effectively shapes consumers’ underlying motivations.

• Motivations and Green Purchase Intention:

  • External Regulation (H6): Positively influenced green purchase intention. This suggests that social approval and the desire to conform to norms play a role, though less powerfully than more autonomous motivations.
  • Introjected Regulation (H7): Did not significantly influence green purchase intention. This finding contradicts some previous research and is attributed to the limited motivational force of guilt-based drivers and potential skepticism towards green advertising in the Japanese context.
  • Identified Regulation (H8): Positively influenced green purchase intention, supporting the notion that consumers who personally value green purchasing are more likely to act on it.
  • Integrated Regulation (H9): Emerged as the strongest predictor of green purchase intention, reinforcing the idea that when green consumption becomes part of one’s identity, it drives purchasing behavior.
  • Intrinsic Motivation (H10): Positively influenced green purchase intention, highlighting the role of personal satisfaction and enjoyment in driving sustainable choices.

• Mediation Analysis: The study confirmed significant mediating effects for external regulation, identified regulation, integrated regulation, and intrinsic motivation between perceived green advertising value and green purchase intention. Integrated regulation and intrinsic motivation demonstrated the strongest mediating effects, underscoring their critical role in translating advertising value into purchase intent.

Implications for Marketers and Future Research

The findings offer crucial insights for green marketers. Strategies should focus on cultivating intrinsic rewards and aligning green consumption with consumers’ personal values and identities. This involves creating green advertising that is not only informative and engaging but also resonates with consumers’ self-perception and their sense of contribution to a larger cause. Minimizing irritation and fostering credibility are paramount to enhancing perceived advertising value.

The study’s limitations, particularly the sample being exclusively Japanese and predominantly comprising older demographics, open avenues for future research. Comparative studies across different cultural contexts and age groups, especially Generation Z, are needed to understand the diverse motivational drivers of green consumption. Longitudinal studies could also provide deeper insights into the evolving nature of consumer perceptions and behaviors over time.

In conclusion, this research contributes significantly to the understanding of green advertising effectiveness by revealing the nuanced pathways through which perceived advertising value, mediated by various motivation types, influences consumers’ intention to purchase green products. The study’s emphasis on the interplay between cultural context and motivational drivers provides a valuable framework for developing more effective and resonant green marketing strategies.