Are “people” or “animals” more attractive? Anthropomorphic images in green-product advertising

The intensification of global environmental problems has increased social awareness of environmental protection, promoting the development of green consumption. Green consumption has become a significant consumption trend, making it increasingly important to conduct research on green products. Adopting the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and the theory of empathy with nature, this study used experiments to explore the effect of matching green-product types with anthropomorphic advertising images on consumer responses. A significant matching effect was found to exist between green-product types and anthropomorphic advertising images. The effect was stronger when self-interested green products matched humanoid images and when altruistic green products matched animal images. Specifically, self-interested green products produced better persuasion effects by being matched with humanoid anthropomorphic advertising images, and altruistic green products produced better persuasion effects by being matched with animal anthropomorphic advertising images. Further, the influence of green products and anthropomorphic advertising images on consumer responses was mediated by anthropomorphic advertising attitude. Moreover, compared with energetic animal anthropomorphism, environmentally friendly (altruistic) green products with warm animal anthropomorphic images had better persuasion effects. In the marketing of green products, enterprises should pay attention to the matching effect between green products and anthropomorphic images to achieve better green advertising effects.