Cold Facts on the Influencer Hotline: A Digital Field Experiment Investigating “Hot” and “Cold” Processing of Greenfluencer Content

Social media influencers addressing the environmental crisis, also called “greenfluencers,” almost seamlessly blend pro-environmental content with insights into their personal lives. Yet, we know little about how this specific interplay affects consumers’ pro-environmental attitudes and behavior dynamically over time. To that end, we used a pre-registered digital field experiment in which 263 Belgian women followed a seemingly real greenfluencer account via Instagram for 10 days. Drawing from the Affect-Reason-Involvement (ARI) model, we systematically varied the degree of pro-environmental density and self-disclosure and investigated mechanisms explaining the differential effects of these content elements on pro-environmental outcomes. Findings revealed that higher pro-environmental density increased perceived autodidact expertise of the influencer. High environmental involvement also moderated the effect of pro-environmental density on pro-environmental outcomes.