This experimental study, guided by attribution theory, investigated the impact of the substantiation and specificity of organizations’ environmental messages on perceived communication motivation and how this perception prompts audiences’ affective and cognitive responses. Findings showed that specific messages increased perceived intrinsic motivation, whereas vague messages increased perceived extrinsic motivation; in turn, perceived intrinsic motive positively influenced audiences’ message attitude, organization attitude, message credibility, organization credibility, and organization’s green image, whereas perceived extrinsic motive negatively influenced these aspects.
AllenM. (2016). Strategic communication for sustainable organizations. Springer.
2.
AllportG. W. (1935). Attitudes: A handbook of social psychology. Clark University Press.
3.
AlniacikU.YilmazC. (2012). The effectiveness of green advertising: Influences of claim specificity, product’s environmental relevance and consumers’ pro-environmental orientation. The Amfiteatru Economic Journal, 14(31), 207–222.
4.
AlonA.VidovicM. (2015). Sustainability performance and assurance: Influence on reputation. Corporate Reputation Review, 18(4), 337–352.
5.
BuhrmesterM.KwangT.GoslingS. D. (2011). Amazon’s Mechanical Turk a new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data?Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(1), 3–5.
6.
CarlsonL.GroveS. J.KangunN. (1993). A content analysis of environmental advertising claims: A matrix method approach. Journal of Advertising, 22(3), 27–39.
7.
CarlsonL.GroveS. J.KangunN.PolonskyM. J. (1996). An international comparison of environmental advertising: Substantive versus associative claims. Journal of Macromarketing, 16(1), 57–68.
8.
CaseC. J.RyanK. S.KingD. L. (2015). Marketing social networking in the Fortune 500. Editorial Review Board, 7(2), 57–67.
9.
CastaldoS.PerriniF.MisaniN.TencatiA. (2009). The missing link between corporate social responsibility and consumer trust: The case of fair trade products. Journal of Business Ethics, 84(1), 1–15.
10.
CervellonM.-C. (2012). Victoria’s dirty secrets: Effectiveness of green not-for-profit messages targeting brands. Journal of Advertising, 41(4), 133–145.
11.
ChanR. Y. (2000). The effectiveness of environmental advertising: The role of claim type and the source country green image. International Journal of Advertising, 19(3), 349–375.
12.
ChanR. Y.LauL. B. (2004). The effectiveness of environmental claims among Chinese consumers: Influences of claim type, country disposition and ecocentric orientation. Journal of Marketing Management, 20(3–4), 273–319.
13.
ChenY.-S. (2010). The drivers of green brand equity: Green brand image, green satisfaction, and green trust. Journal of Business Ethics, 93(2), 307–319.
14.
DavisJ. J. (1993). Strategies for environmental advertising. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 10(2), 19–36.
15.
DavisJ. J. (1994). Consumer response to corporate environmental advertising. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 11(2), 25–37.
16.
do PaçoA. M. F.ReisR. (2012). Factors affecting skepticism toward green advertising. Journal of Advertising, 41(4), 147–155.
17.
EaglyA. H.ChaikenS. (1993). The psychology of attitudes. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers.
18.
GrayE. R.BalmerJ. M. (1998). Managing corporate image and corporate reputation. Long Range Planning, 31(5), 695–702.
19.
HayesA. F. (2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. Guilford.
20.
HeiderF. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. Lawrence Erlbaum.
21.
HovlandC. I.LumsdaineA. A.SheffieldF. D. (1949). Experiments on mass communication. Princeton University Press.
22.
KaplanA. M.HaenleinM. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59–68.
23.
KelleyH. H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In LevineD.BerlyneD. E. (Eds.), Nebraska symposium on motivation (pp. 192–238). University of Nebraska Press.
24.
KelleyH. H. (1972). Attribution in social interaction. In JonesE. E. (Ed.), Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behavior (pp. 79–94). General Learning Press.
25.
KelleyH. H.MichelaJ. L. (1980). Attribution theory and research. Annual Review of Psychology, 31(1), 457–501.
26.
KimM.-J.HanS. (2015). Which company is the best for green advertising?: The effects of green advertising on consumer response focused on advertiser characteristics. Indian Journal of Science and Technology, 8(S7), 414–422.
27.
LarocheM.KimC.ZhouL. (1996). Brand familiarity and confidence as determinants of purchase intention: An empirical test in a multiple brand context. Journal of Business Research, 37(2), 115–120.
28.
LavidgeR. J.SteinerG. A. (1961). A model for predictive measurements of advertising effectiveness. The Journal of Marketing, 25, 59–62.
29.
LeeJ.-S.HsuL.-T.HanH.KimY. (2010). Understanding how consumers view green hotels: How a hotel’s green image can influence behavioural intentions. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 18(7), 901–914.
30.
LichtensteinD. R.BeardenW. O. (1989). Contextual influences on perceptions of merchant-supplied reference prices. Journal of Consumer Research, 16(1), 55–66.
31.
LiuB. F.KimS. (2011). How organizations framed the 2009 H1N1 pandemic via social and traditional media: Implications for US health communicators. Public Relations Review, 37(3), 233–244.
32.
LovejoyK.SaxtonG. D. (2012). Information, community, and action: How nonprofit organizations use social media. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 17(3), 337–353.
33.
MacKenzieS. B.LutzR. J. (1989). An empirical examination of the structural antecedents of attitude toward the ad in an advertising pretesting context. The Journal of Marketing, 53(2), 48–65.
34.
McDermottV. (2009). Attribution theory. In LittlejohnS. W.FossK. A. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of communication theory (pp. 60–63). SAGE.
35.
McGuireW. J. (1969). The nature of attitudes and attitude change. The Handbook of Social Psychology, 3(2), 136–314.
36.
MuralidharanS.RasmussenL.PattersonD.ShinJ.-H. (2011). Hope for Haiti: An analysis of Facebook and Twitter usage during the earthquake relief efforts. Public Relations Review, 37(2), 175–177.
37.
NyilasyG.GangadharbatlaH.AngelaP. (2013). Perceived greenwashing: The interactive effects of green advertising and corporate environmental performance on consumer reactions. Journal of Business Ethics, 125, 693–707.
38.
ParguelB.Benoît-MoreauF.LarceneuxF. (2011). How sustainability ratings might deter ‘greenwashing’: A closer look at ethical corporate communication. Journal of Business Ethics, 102(1), 15–28.
39.
PettyR. E.CacioppoJ. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. In PettyR. E.CacioppoJ. T. (Eds.), Communication and persuasion (pp. 1–24). Springer.
40.
RosenbergM. J.HovlandC. I. (1960). Cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of attitudes. In RosenbergM. J. (Ed.), Attitude organization and change: An analysis of consistency among attitude components (pp. 1–14). Yale University Press.
41.
RybalkoS.SeltzerT. (2010). Dialogic communication in 140 characters or less: How Fortune 500 companies engage stakeholders using Twitter. Public Relations Review, 36(4), 336–341.
42.
SaxtonG. D.WatersR. D. (2014). What do stakeholders like on Facebook? Examining public reactions to nonprofit organizations’ informational, promotional, and community-building messages. Journal of Public Relations Research, 26(3), 280–299.
43.
SchuhwerkM. E.Lefkoff-HagiusR. (1995). Green or non-green? Does type of appeal matter when advertising a green product?Journal of Advertising, 24(2), 45–54.
44.
ShinS.KiE.-J. (2017, August). Sustainability tweets of for-profit and nonprofit organizations and their effects on publics’ social media reactions. The Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Chicago, IL, United States.
45.
StricklandL. H.BarefootJ. C.HockensteinP. (1976). Monitoring behavior in the surveillance and trust paradigm. Representative Research in Social Psychology, 7(1), 51–57.
46.
TillB. D.BuslerM. (2000). The match-up hypothesis: Physical attractiveness, expertise, and the role of fit on brand attitude, purchase intent and brand beliefs. Journal of Advertising, 29(3), 1–13.
47.
Twitter. (2019). Q3 2019 letter to shareholders.
48.
Van DoornJ.LemonK. N.MittalV.NassS.PickD.PirnerP.VerhoefP. C. (2010). Customer engagement behavior: Theoretical foundations and research directions. Journal of Service Research, 13(3), 253–266.
49.
WalkerK. (2010). A systematic review of the corporate reputation literature: Definition, measurement, and theory. Corporate Reputation Review, 12(4), 357–387.
50.
WatersR. D.BurnettE.LammA.LucasJ. (2009). Engaging stakeholders through social networking: How nonprofit organizations are using Facebook. Public Relations Review, 35(2), 102–106.
51.
YuJ.CoulsonK. R.ZhouJ. X.WenJ. (2013). Substantive and associative claims in environmental communication: A study of fortune 500 websites. Journal of Promotion Management, 19(2), 211–223.
52.
ZajoncR. B.MarkusH. (1982). Affective and cognitive factors in preferences. Journal of Consumer Research, 9(2), 123–131.
53.
ZhuB. (2013). The impact of green advertising on consumer purchase intention of green products. World Review of Business Research, 3(3), 72.
