Author(s)

Jie Wang, Jue Yang

School of Management, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.

Assertive appeal is common in green marketing, but how it affects consumer behavior intention remains to be further studied. With the introduce of psychological reactance theory in the field of communication, this study explores the psychological mechanism behind the effect of assertive appeal on consumer behavior intention, and meanwhile introduces effort investment to explore the boundary conditions of the effect of assertive appeal on behavior intention in public welfare domains. The results show that when consumer invests more effort in responding to appeals, assertive (vs. non-assertive) appeals lead to higher behavior intention. In contrast, the positive effects of assertive appeals will disappear for consumer with less effort. Psychological reactance plays a mediating role in the influence of assertive appeals and effort investment on consumer behavior intention. Based on the above conclusions, this study puts forward some suggestions on green marketing.

Assertive Appeal, Effort Investment, Psychological Reactance

Wang, J. and Yang, J. (2020) Research on the Effect of Assertive Appeal on Consumer Behavioral Intention. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 8, 252-262. doi: 10.4236/jss.2020.82020.