How Is Green Purchase Influenced by Message Framing Through AI Versus Humans? Chyi Jaw, I Putu Gede Iwan Trisna Jaya
Department of Business Administration,
National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Abstract
The development of AI has revolutionized personalized recommendations by continuously improving suggestions through learning from user interactions. However, humans bring an intuitive understanding to the process, providing personalized recommendations based on expertise, empathy, and nuanced insights not easily replicated by AI. This study explores consumers^ responses to different (AI vs. human) recommendation agents and environmental (positive vs. negative) appeals for green products, and considers the moderating effect of gender. The main purpose of this present research is to demonstrate how consumer purchase intention towards green products is influenced by negative and positive environmental appeals in an AI- or a human-recommended agent. We conducted a 2 (recommendation agents: AI vs. human) X 2 (environmental appeals: positive vs. negative) between experimental design. The results show that consumer purchase intention is different when green product messages with positive/negative environmental appeals are dealt with by an AI agent or a human agent. Additionally, the results of ANOVA reveal the moderating effect of gender on the relationship among recommendation agents, environmental appeals, and consumers^ green purchase intention. The research provides valuable insights for researchers and managers in understanding the communication effects of AI and human agents along with different message framing on green product recommendation- and the mediating influences of gender on the performance of green product recommendation agents. The authors discuss several important implications of these findings for businesses, environment protection organizations, and public policy officials.
