Speaker
Description
sustainable consumption, willingness-to-pay, emotional priming,cause-related marketing
Current consumption patterns are not sustainable: most food products carry social and environmental costs that harm current and future generations worldwide (e.g., ILO et al., 2019; Pendrill et al., 2022). Emotional priming in social media is a widely used instrument to influence consumer behavior. Social media platforms provide various options in terms of format, frequency, and timing to deliver these emotional messages. Therefore, gaining insights into the most effective ways for policymakers, civil society, and the private sector to reach consumers with their messages on these platforms is becoming increasingly important.
In this study, we mimic social media content to test the effectiveness of emotional priming in incentivizing sustainable consumption. Specifically, we examine whether emotionally primed information about sustainability aspects in cocoa production increases consumers’ valuation for sustainably produced products in the short and medium term.
Former studies analysing the determinants of sustainable food choices find that information provision alone has limited effects (e.g., White et al., 2019) and that activating consumers’ values tends to increase their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for sustainability certifications.
Besides values, individuals' emotions can also be targeted. Research on charitable giving provides abundant evidence of how emotional appeals increase prosocial spending, regardless of participants' predisposition towards it (e.g., Cavanaugh et al., 2015; Goenka and van Osselaer, 2019). Small and Verrochi (2009) combined information and an emotional prime (photo) and found that when participants had the opportunity to deliberately process the information, the presence of additional information reduced the primed sympathy. However, if participants were under a high cognitive load and unable to process the information, the effect of the emotional prime remained unchanged. This finding is relevant to our understanding of the role of emotions in consumption behavior because the shopping environment is filled with various signals and abundant information that increases consumers' cognitive load. Priming emotions may have a lasting effect in such an environment compared to information-only interventions.
Today, an increasing number of sustainability awareness campaigns focus on priming emotions through social media content, particularly through short videos comprising a few lines of text and imagery. Examples of such campaigns include the United Nations Development Program’s initiative on carbon pricing (UNDP, n.d.) or the European Union’s campaign “make it green” (European Union, n.d.). Priming emotions in social media awareness campaigns can be a powerful policy tool because it has the potential to reach a broad audience, including consumers who may not yet be interested in sustainability and who might be left out if only information is provided (see Matthes et al. 2014).
Yet, it is not well understood whether these campaigns indeed trigger emotional responses and ultimately lead to changes in consumption behavior. Another question that remains unanswered in this context is the time gap between exposure to the social media campaign (whether emotional or informative) and the actual purchasing decision. For instance, the study by Antonetti et al. (2018) suggests that priming negative emotions may lead to increased delayed compliance compared to not priming emotions.
To investigate how emotional priming in social media campaigns affects consumers’ valuation of sustainable foods in the short and medium-term, we developed treatments that simulate social media content, specifically Instagram Reels. Our one-minute videos consist of animated slides presenting information on two aspects: (1) environmental sustainability and (2) social responsibility related to cocoa production. Each includes two different information treatments: (a) with emotional primes and (b) without emotional primes. The emotionally primed videos incorporate real-world images depicting child labor and deforestation to reinforce the conveyed information, while neutral imagery (cocoa beans) replaces these images in the non-primed counterfactual slides. The treatments are randomly assigned to 2,161 German consumers through online surveys. Our sample consists of frequent and active online users, and, hence, accurately represent the potential target audience of social media campaigns. To examine both short- and medium-term effects, we assess consumers’ WTP using a discrete choice experiment immediately after the treatments and again two weeks later.
Our study contributes to the existing literature in three ways. First, we employ an innovative media format, specifically social media videos, as our treatment. Second, we provide evidence on both short-term and medium-term effects, acknowledging the time gaps between priming and the actual purchasing decision. Previous studies have predominantly focused on short-term effects only. Third, we clearly distinguish between sustainability certificates (Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade) and uncertified sustainability claims. Limited knowledge exists regarding consumer preferences for products featuring company-specific (uncertified) sustainability claims and cause-related marketing strategies (Zerbini et al., 2019). To the best of our knowledge, no study has examined the effects of treatments on consumer valuation and perceptions of such products, particularly when compared to certified alternatives.
Our results provide several insights: Firstly, the videos featuring emotional primes indeed induce stronger levels of negative emotions in the short term. However, these effects diminish in the medium term, as all participants exhibit lower levels of emotional response. Secondly, the emotional primes also lead to increased WTP for most of the sustainably sourced alternatives, indicating positive short-term effects. Nevertheless, these effects diminish in the medium term.
These results suggest that the timing of exposure to these messages is crucial, as they should ideally coincide with the imminent consumption choice. To achieve this proximity, messages could be strategically placed at the point of sale, such as through collaborations with retailers in public campaigns. Additionally, the constant exposure to social media content through smartphones offers opportunities to time posts according to peak shopping hours. However, the medium-term effects indicate the need for different strategies adjusted to different time frames. Information-only campaigns may ultimately be more or –at least – not less effective in the medium term.
Besides timing, our findings suggest that posts or campaigns do not need to focus on a specific certification. Our video highlighted social and environmental issues associated with cocoa production without specifically mentioning any certifications that address these problems. Therefore, various actors from the public and private sector can jointly create campaigns to raise awareness about the negative externalities of consumption among the population.
