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HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Environmental Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1552963
This article is part of the Research Topic The Intersection of Psychology, Healthy Behaviors, and its Outcomes View all 66 articles
The Influence of Message Framing and Time Metaphors in Green Advertising on Consumer Effects: An Examination Based on the Mediating Role of Approach-Avoidance Motivation
Provisionally accepted- School of Management, Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology, Xi’an, China
Objectives: There is currently a discrepancy between consumers' understanding and practice of green consumption, resulting in inadequate levels of engagement. It is crucial for enterprises to design persuasive green advertisements to enhance consumers' willingness to make green purchases.Methodology: This research employs the perspective of time movement and the S-O-R theoretical model. Two scenario experiments were conducted alongside a questionnaire survey to examine the effects of green advertising message framing (gain vs. loss), time metaphors (ego-moving vs. time-moving), and approach-avoidance motivation on consumers' willingness to make green purchases.Findings: When green advertisements utilize a gain-framing, ego-moving metaphor effectively enhance consumers' willingness to purchase. Conversely, loss-framing paired with time-moving metaphor better promote green consumption behaviors. Approach and avoidance motivations mediate the effects between message framing and time metaphors.Conclusion: Enterprises should consider the matching effects of different information types when designing green advertisements. Specifically, aligning gain-framing with ego-moving metaphor and loss-framing with time-moving metaphor can significantly enhance consumer purchase intentions. Additionally, marketers should focus on consumers' psychological motivations, as approach-avoidance motivation affects the impact of advertising message combinations on purchasing willingness.Implications: The findings elucidate the psychological pathways influencing consumers' green purchasing decisions, assisting enterprises in optimizing advertising message strategies and offering theoretical and practical recommendations for effective green advertising design.
Keywords: green advertising, Message framing, Time metaphor, Approach Motivation, Avoidance Motivation
Received: 29 Dec 2024; Accepted: 11 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Dong, Cao and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Mingfang Dong, School of Management, Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology, Xi’an, China
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