Environmental worldview beliefs and CSR advertising

Purpose - This paper aims to show how environment-related worldview beliefs, in addition to specific persuasion knowledge, can influence how a consumer responds to ads about corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects. Design/methodology/approach - Two experiments manipulated ad copy and consumers’ persuasion knowledge to examine the effects of consumers’ environmental worldview beliefs on their judgments of a firm’s CSR reforestation project. Findings - When an ad presented ambiguous information, both consumers’ persuasion knowledge and their environmental worldview influenced the attribution of the firm’s motives. When an ad presented environment-specific information, however, consumers’ worldview did not influence their attribution of motives. Attributions, in turn, predicted attitudes toward the ad and attitudes toward the brand and were associated with intentions for information-seeking and referral behavior. Research limitations/implications - A consumer’s core beliefs can play an important role in understanding the application of persuasion knowledge, and the reinforcement-of-meaning principle expands the persuasion knowledge model’s explanatory power. Practical implications - Marketing communications that involve social responsibility projects must take into account how core beliefs can influence the way consumers respond to projects. Social implications - This research demonstrates the importance of worldview beliefs in communication that takes place in the public sphere. Originality/value - The experiments’ results contribute to a more robust understanding of the persuasion knowledge model, particularly as it applies to CSR messages and introduces the reinforcement-of-meaning principle.