IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v11y2019i5p1333-d210701.html

Design for Sustainability: The Effect of Lettering Case on Environmental Concern from a Green Advertising Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Yao Song

    (School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong)

  • Yan Luximon

    (School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong)

Abstract

Recent green advertising research has focused on the effectiveness of different advertising claims and people’s interactions with the environment or environmental concerns, indicating the significant role of visual appeals in influencing people’s environmental attitudes. However, surprisingly, only a limited amount of research has addressed the effect of lettering case in green advertising on people’s perceptions and their consequent environmental concerns. This study tries to fill in this research gap by showing that uppercase (vs. lowercase) advertising taglines on environmental threats could improve people’s fear arousal, advertising congruence, environmental concern and the mediating role of fear arousal and congruence in this process. The managerial implications and limitations are also discussed in this study.

Suggested Citation

  • Yao Song & Yan Luximon, 2019. "Design for Sustainability: The Effect of Lettering Case on Environmental Concern from a Green Advertising Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-15, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:5:p:1333-:d:210701
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/5/1333/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/5/1333/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gergely Nyilasy & Harsha Gangadharbatla & Angela Paladino, 2014. "Perceived Greenwashing: The Interactive Effects of Green Advertising and Corporate Environmental Performance on Consumer Reactions," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 125(4), pages 693-707, December.
    2. Ralph Adolphs & Frederic Gosselin & Tony W. Buchanan & Daniel Tranel & Philippe Schyns & Antonio R. Damasio, 2005. "A mechanism for impaired fear recognition after amygdala damage," Nature, Nature, vol. 433(7021), pages 68-72, January.
    3. Janis L Dickinson & Poppy McLeod & Robert Bloomfield & Shorna Allred, 2016. "Which Moral Foundations Predict Willingness to Make Lifestyle Changes to Avert Climate Change in the USA?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(10), pages 1-11, October.
    4. K. Charry & N. Demoulin, 2012. "Behavioural evidence for the effectiveness of threat appeals in the promotion of healthy food to children," Post-Print hal-00785675, HAL.
    5. Zimmer, Mary R. & Stafford, Thomas F. & Stafford, Marla Royne, 1994. "Green issues: Dimensions of environmental concern," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 63-74, May.
    6. Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Capraro, Valerio & Rascón-Ramírez, Ericka, 2018. "Gender differences in altruism on Mechanical Turk: Expectations and actual behaviour," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 19-23.
    7. Xiaobing Xu & Rong Chen & Maggie Wenjing Liu, 2017. "The effects of uppercase and lowercase wordmarks on brand perceptions," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 28(3), pages 449-460, September.
    8. Stefano Puntoni & Bart de Langhe & Stijn M. J. van Osselaer, 2009. "Bilingualism and the Emotional Intensity of Advertising Language," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 35(6), pages 1012-1025, April.
    9. Kohli, Chiranjeev & Leuthesser, Lance & Suri, Rajneesh, 2007. "Got slogan? Guidelines for creating effective slogans," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 415-422.
    10. Lee, Yih Hwai & Mason, Charlotte, 1999. "Responses to Information Incongruency in Advertising: The Role of Expectancy, Relevancy, and Humor," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 26(2), pages 156-169, September.
    11. Pina, José M. & Dall'Olmo Riley, Francesca & Lomax, Wendy, 2013. "Generalizing spillover effects of goods and service brand extensions: A meta-analysis approach," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(9), pages 1411-1419.
    12. Pham, Michel Tuan, 1996. "Cue Representation and Selection Effects of Arousal on Persuasion," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 22(4), pages 373-387, March.
    13. Hartmann, Patrick & Apaolaza, Vanessa & D'Souza, Clare & Echebarria, Carmen & Barrutia, Jose M., 2013. "Nuclear power threats, public opposition and green electricity adoption: Effects of threat belief appraisal and fear arousal," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 1366-1376.
    14. Misra, Shekhar & Beatty, Sharon E., 1990. "Celebrity spokesperson and brand congruence : An assessment of recall and affect," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 159-173, September.
    15. Valerio Capraro & David G. Rand, 2018. "Do the Right Thing: Experimental evidence that preferences for moral behavior, rather than equity or efficiency per se, drive human prosociality," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 13(1), pages 99-111, January.
    16. Karen L Newman & Stanley D Nollen, 1996. "Culture and Congruence: The Fit Between Management Practices and national Culture," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 27(4), pages 753-779, December.
    17. Claudiu V. Dimofte & Richard F. Yalch, 2007. "Consumer Response to Polysemous Brand Slogans," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 33(4), pages 515-522, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arthur Cheng-Hsui Chen & Hsiu-Hui Wu, 2020. "How Should Green Messages Be Framed: Single or Double?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(10), pages 1-16, May.
    2. Beibei Yue & Guanghua Sheng & Shengxiang She & Jiaqi Xu, 2020. "Impact of Consumer Environmental Responsibility on Green Consumption Behavior in China: The Role of Environmental Concern and Price Sensitivity," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-16, March.
    3. Aekyoung Kim & Sam J. Maglio, 2021. "Text is gendered: the role of letter case," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 32(2), pages 179-190, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Niu, Yixuan & Feng, Yadi & Li, Bin & Ma, Baolong, 2025. "Shaping consumer purchase and experience with paradoxical marketing," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    2. Angeliki Antoniou, 2019. "Compatibility of Small Team Personalities in Computer-Based Tasks," Challenges, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-12, May.
    3. Lee, Michael S.W. & Septianto, Felix & Frethey-Bentham, Catherine & Gao, Esther, 2020. "Condoms and bananas: Shock advertising explained through congruence theory," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    4. Michael Ioerger & Laura V Machia & Margaret A Turk, 2019. "Self-other overlap: A unique predictor of willingness to work with people with disability as part of one’s career," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(8), pages 1-27, August.
    5. Bilancini, Ennio & Boncinelli, Leonardo & Guarnieri, Pietro & Spadoni, Lorenzo, 2023. "Delaying and motivating decisions in the (Bully) dictator game," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    6. Valerio Capraro & Roberto Di Paolo & Veronica Pizziol, 2023. "Assessing Large Language Models' ability to predict how humans balance self-interest and the interest of others," Papers 2307.12776, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    7. Capraro, Valerio & Rodriguez-Lara, Ismael, 2025. "Moral preferences in ultimatum and impunity games," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    8. Thunström, Linda, 2019. "Preferences for fairness over losses," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    9. Kosar Mousavi & Elaheh Kowsari & Seeram Ramakrishna & Amutha Chinnappan & Mohammad Gheibi, 2025. "A comprehensive review of greenwashing in the textile industry (life cycle assessment, life cycle cost, and eco-labeling)," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 27(9), pages 21737-21777, September.
    10. Paulo SILVEIRA & Susana GALVÃO & Graça PENTEADO, 2017. "“Yes They Can?†- An Empirical Study on the Effect of Slogans in Brand Awareness," Book chapters-LUMEN Proceedings, in: Camelia IGNATESCU & Antonio SANDU & Tomita CIULEI (ed.), Rethinking Social Action. Core Values in Practice, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 75, pages 820-831, Editura Lumen.
    11. Dong Jenn Yang, 2024. "Exploring the Communication and Spillover Effects of the Advertising Endorser and Appeal of Nonprofit Organizations," SAGE Open, , vol. 14(1), pages 21582440231, January.
    12. Ye-Seul Lee & Hyun-Seo Song & Hackjin Kim & Younbyoung Chae, 2019. "Altruistic decisions are influenced by the allocation of monetary incentives in a pain-sharing game," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(3), pages 1-16, March.
    13. Valerio Capraro & Andrea Vanzo & Antonio Cabrales, 2022. "Playing with words: Do people exploit loaded language to affect others’ decisions for their own benefit?," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 17(1), pages 50-69, January.
    14. Sebastian J. Goerg & David Rand & Gari Walkowitz, 2020. "Framing effects in the prisoner’s dilemma but not in the dictator game," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 6(1), pages 1-12, June.
    15. Zhou, Lianxi & Poon, Patrick & Wang, Haizhong, 2015. "Consumers' reactions to global versus local advertising appeals: A test of culturally incongruent images in China," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 561-568.
    16. Valerio Capraro & Andrea Vanzo, 2019. "The power of moral words: Loaded language generates framing effects in the extreme dictator game," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 14(3), pages 309-317, May.
    17. Kareklas, Ioannis & Muehling, Darrel D. & King, Skyler, 2019. "The effect of color and self-view priming in persuasive communications," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 33-49.
    18. Kim, Juran & Kang, Seungmook & Bae, Joonheui, 2022. "Human likeness and attachment effect on the perceived interactivity of AI speakers," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 797-804.
    19. Frings, Oliver & Abildtrup, Jens & Montagné-Huck, Claire & Gorel, Salomé & Stenger, Anne, 2023. "Do individual PES buyers care about additionality and free-riding? A choice experiment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    20. Jung, Dain & Kwak, Do Won & Tang, Kam Ki & Yazbeck, Myra, 2025. "Shared lives, shared stress: Witnessing and spillover effects in spousal mental health interactions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 233(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:5:p:1333-:d:210701. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.