The effectiveness of environmental claims among Chinese consumers : influences of claim type, country disposition and ecocentric orientation

This study empirically examines how environmental claim type affects the communication effectiveness of environmental advertising claims among Chinese consumers, and how two individual difference variables—country disposition and ecocentric orientation—moderate the claim type-effectiveness relationship. The present findings reveal that environmental claim type, country disposition, and ecocentric orientation all exert significant influences on communication effectiveness. Specifically, it is shown that substantive environmental claims generate greater communication effectiveness than associative environmental claims for both high-involvement and low-involvement purchases. For both types of purchases, environmental claims also generate more positive responses from consumers exhibiting a strong ecocentric orientation than from those exhibiting a weak ecocentric orientation. In addition, when compared with those holding a negative country disposition toward the source country, consumers holding a positive country disposition express more favorable responses toward environmental claims in high-involvement purchases. Finally, the present study also reveals that country disposition and ecocentric orientation jointly exert significant moderating effects on the claim type-effectiveness relationship in high-involvement purchases. These results remind marketers of the importance of adopting a situational perspective by taking country disposition and ecocentric orientation into account when determining which types of environmental claims should be employed to appeal to their targeted Chinese consumers.