A Research About The Impact Of Guilt Appeals And Issue Proximity On Green Advertising Effectiveness

Ecological problems such as water and soil loss,sand and dust weather,fog weather and the greenhouse effect are becoming even more severe,the environmental issue has become one of the most widely concerned problems in China.As the social public pay more and more attention to environmental protection,the concept of green marketing is becoming popular increasingly in the consumer market.At the same time,the marketing staffs rely on emotional appeals to recommend all kinds of green products to consumers and expect to promote green consumption,in ordert to change the purchase intentions of the consumers.Based on dissonance theory,social impact theory and psychological reactance theory,this article attempts to build a concept model which comprises guilt appeals,issue proximity and green advertising effectiveness.Guilt appeals were regarded as independent variables,issue proximity is served as the independent variable and the dependent variable as well,green advertising effectiveness is regarded as the dependent variable and would be judged by the willingness of consumer's purchase intentions and the attitude toward the products.An experiment of 2(guilt appeals:a guilt appeal ad vs a non-guilt appeal ad)*2(issue proximity:high issue proximity vs low issue proximity)factorial design is conducted to explore the influence of guilt appeals,issue proximity and the interaction between guilt appeals and issue proximity to green advertising effectiveness.Taking 320 college students as the research subjects,tihis article collectes experimental data by adopting the scenario experiment and processes the data by SPSS18.0.The empirical analysis of data processing results show that:(1)Guilt appeals dose not have the main effect to green advertising effect,that is to say,a guilt appeal ad will be not more effective than a non-guilt appeal ad obviously.(2)Issue proximity have an obvious impact on green advertising effectiveness,a high issue proximity ad will be more effective than a low issue proximity ad.(3)The interaction between guilt appeals and issue proximity is apparent:on the one hand,when it comes to an issue with a low proximity,guilt appeals would be more effective than none-guilt appeals;on the other hand,when it comes to an issue with a high proximity,none-guilt appeals would would be more effective than guilt appeals.In the end of the article,several marketing proposals are presented based on the research conclusions.First,guilt appeals affect the consumer's purchase intentions and the attitudes toward the products,so a moderate amount of guilt appeal should be selected,too low or too high level-of guilt appeals is not appropriate.Second,the credibility of green advertising should be improved and the manipulation of the advertising intention ought to be decreased,only in this way can consumers understand the green advertising rmore deeply and purchase the products just as the advertising recommends.Third,the distance between advertising issue and the consumers would have an profound effect on green advertising effectiveness,thus the marketing staffs must select an issue that is not far away from the consumers and then increase the attentions of the consumers.Finally,matching the intensity of guilt appeals and issue proximity,a guilt appeal ad with a low issue proximity and a none-guilt appeal ad with a high issue proximity would have a better advertising effectiveness.