More Creative, More Eco-Friendly？How Does Creative Activity Affect Consumers’ Eco-Friendly Behavior

Subjects: Psychology >> Other Disciplines of Psychology submitted time 2024-04-24

Liu Wumai Yang Qiaoying

Abstract： With the rapid development of the environmental industry, the question of how to encourage consumers to behave environmental-friendly has become crucial. Scholars in the fields of social psychology, environmental psychology, and consumer behavior have explored the antecedents of eco-friendly behavior from a variety of perspectives. However, for policy makers and product producers, more solutions are needed to the questions of how to motivate consumers to engage in eco-friendly behaviors and how to increase consumers’ purchases of environmentally friendly products. In addition, most of the studies have focused on social and individual factors that drive consumers to engage in eco-friendly behaviors, while the contextual factors that are closely related to marketing practices have been paid limited attention, only Li et al. (2023) and Sun et al. (2024) have discussed the same-domain contextual factors that affects the eco-friendly behaviors. Therefore, exploring the antecedents of consumers’ eco-friendly behaviors from a cross-domain perspective can be a powerful addition to the pro-environmental research./t/nBased on this reality, this paper proposes that engaging consumers in creative activities can enhance their willingness to engage in eco-friendly behaviors, self-importance mediated this effect. In addition, we propose that environmental advertising interest appeals moderated the effect. Through six multi-method studies, this paper validates the positive effect of creative activity participation on consumers’ eco-friendly behavior. Specifically, Study 1 provides correlation evidence between creative activity experience and propensity to engage in eco-friendly behavior through data from a large-scale secondary survey. Study 2 verified the causal relationship between participation in creative activities and consumers’ eco-friendly behavior, suggesting that prior participation in creative activities promotes consumers’ subsequent eco-friendly attitudes and behaviors. Study 3 examined the mediation effect of self-importance, and ruled out the alternative explanations based on meaning in life, openness, and abstract thinking. Study 4 demonstrated that the effect was significant (disappeared) when environmental advertisements conveyed personal interest appeals (versus social interest appeals)./t/nThis paper has the following theoretical contributions. First, this paper explores the impact of consumers’ participation in creative activities on their subsequent eco-friendly behavior, a work that on the one hand contributes new outcome variables to the field of creativity research. On the other hand, it also contributes to a new understanding of the link between creativity and pro-social behavior topics. Second, this paper advances research on consumer eco-friendly behavior. Discussing how consumers’ experiences in prior contexts influence their eco-friendly behavior in subsequent contexts can contribute new antecedents to environmental behavior research. Finally, this paper enriches the research on self-importance. The paper reveals that increased self-importance is a key psychological mechanism by which engaging in creative activities can promote eco-friendly behavior, a finding that adds new antecedent and outcome variables to the self-importance literature.

Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review

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