Environmental Versus Economic Advertising Appeals for Sustainable Consumption: Consumer–Nature Empathy and Environmental Involvement

Promoting sustainable consumption requires communication strategies that make environmental benefits persuasive while recognizing consumers’ private economic motives. Drawing on the stimulus–organism–response framework, this study compares environmental versus economic advertising appeals for the same household product and tests whether consumer–nature empathy mediates their effect on purchase intention and whether environmental involvement conditions appeal effectiveness. A pretest (N = 60) validated two matched laundry-detergent advertisements. The main between-subjects experiment included 300 participants, with 150 assigned to each condition. Environmental appeals generated higher purchase intention than economic appeals (M = 4.33 vs. 3.35, d = 0.91). Consumer–nature empathy partially mediated this effect (indirect effect = 0.251, 95% bootstrap CI [0.139, 0.379]). Treating environmental involvement as a continuous variable revealed a significant appeal × involvement interaction (B = 0.524, 95% CI [0.371, 0.678]). Environmental involvement positively predicted purchase intention under environmental appeals but negatively predicted it under economic appeals. The findings show that sustainable advertising effectiveness depends on both affective resonance with nature and alignment between message framing and audience involvement. The study contributes to sustainable-consumption research by integrating message design, nature-focused empathy, and audience segmentation within a controlled experimental framework.