Advertising strategies and sustainable development: The effects of green advertising appeals and subjective busyness on green purchase intention

Abstract As environmental issues receive global attention, sustainable development has gradually become a crucial element of business strategies. A considerable number of enterprises have practiced green innovations and introduced green products to the market. A key issue in realizing the sustainability of business strategies is to motivate consumers to purchase green products through effective green advertising strategies. When promoting green products, corporates commonly face a crucial decision that which type of appeals should be employed to enhance the effectiveness of green advertising strategies. Based on the Theory of Self‐regulation and Theory of Self‐congruency, this study aims to propose and examine a conceptual model to uncover how advertising appeals affect the green purchase intention of consumers with different subjective feelings of busyness. Four experimental studies were conducted, and the results reveal that the other‐benefiting appeal stimulates higher self‐image congruency of subjectively busy consumers and therefore boosts green purchase intention. The self‐benefiting appeal activates functional congruency of consumers with low subjective busyness, thus increasing purchase intention. Furthermore, only in the context of high environmental accountability could the other‐benefiting appeal induce higher green purchase intention of subjectively busy consumers. Managerially, the findings guide practitioners on employing advertising appeals reasonably to maximize the effectiveness of green advertising strategies by considering consumers' subjective busyness.