How does green marketing on social media affect consumers' green purchase intention? Based on the perspective of greenwash and green brand image

Abstract

As the demand for green consumption increases, brands carry out green marketing activities through social media more and more frequently, which will lead to two distinct effects -- the green brand image and greenwash perceived by consumers. We believe that greenwash, as a negative effect caused by the explosive growth of green marketing on social media, may be inhibited by the positive brand image created by the brand's own green marketing, thus affecting consumers' expected environmental consequences (i.e. green perceived value and green perceived risk), and thus enhancing their green purchase intention. The empirical results of 351 questionnaires show that green brand image can weaken consumers' perception of greenwashing, improve consumers' perceived value of green, reduce their perceived risk of green, and enhance their green purchase intention. Meanwhile, compared with green brand image, greenwash has less influence on green purchase intention. Therefore, we suggest that brands trust the effect of social media green marketing and control the quality of related activities to prevent a large number of low-quality marketing activities from causing the generalization of greenwash.