The effectiveness of environmental claims for services advertising

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to explore how different types of environmental claims may affect the communication effectiveness of environmental advertising. Two two moderating variables include the perceived eco-friendly image of the originating country and consumer involvement. Design/methodology/approach - The examination involves the analysis of the responses of 1,200 subjects in Shanghai, China, to mock advertisements containing environmental claims using a 2 × 3 factorial design. Findings - Environmental claims enhance the communication effectiveness of advertisements for both high- and low-involvement services. For highinvolvement services, substantive environmental claims generate more favorable attitudinal responses than do associative environmental claims. Research limitations/implications - This research focused on a single Chinese city and on two service categories with contrasting degrees of involvement. While such a confinement can enhance the internal validity of the findings, their external validity has yet to be established. Pra ctical implications - These findings suggest that marketers should adopt a situational perspective by taking into account environmental claim type, country disposition, the degree of environmental consciousness of their target consumers, and service type when designing their environmental advertising campaigns. Originality/value - Although a number of previous studies have focused on the application of environmental claims to advertise products, similar investigation into how these claims may help advertise services is virtually non-existent. In this respect, the present study can be viewed as the first empirical work devoted to closing this research gap.