Social media influencers who are passionate about environmental causes can help the tourism industry inspire tourists to engage in pro-environmental behavior to help mitigate waste and pollution, according to a new study from researchers in the Penn State School of Hospitality Management.
The research team found that influencers who are highly passionate about sustainability lifestyles - coined "green influencers" - can increase tourists' environmental support through social media messaging. The researchers also found that environmental support, or backing waste reduction and wildlife conservation efforts, can be passed along to tourists via social media when influencers display less passion but do convey strong, specific goals.
Led by Penn State Assistant Professor of Hospitality Management Anni Ding, the research team published its findings in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism.
"Green influencers are people who are highly committed and passionate about environmental causes," Ding said. "Pollution and waste accumulation can lead to environmental damage at tourist destinations. Tourism companies and destinations can leverage green influencers in their marketing efforts to promote environmentally friendly messaging to help prevent this damage."
To determine a green influencer's impact on the environmental support of tourists, the researchers completed two experiments with participants recruited via Prolific, a crowdsourcing panel data platform.
In the first experiment, the researchers explored the effects of green influencers' passion - or intensity of expression - on tourist support for environmental initiatives, using data from 322 survey participants who were randomly assigned to view a set of social media posts depicting a fictional beach cleanup. One set of social media posts conveyed passion-related emotions and used passionate language whereas another set contained a straightforward recap of the cleanup without displays of emotional imagery or terminology. After viewing the posts, participants answered questions about the passion depicted in the posts as well as about their own green self-efficacy, or one's belief about their own abilities to act in support of the environment.
"We found passion can be passed from the influencer to their followers through social media," Ding said. "The link between influencer passion and tourists' environmental support is reinforced by emotional contagion theory, which says emotions can be transmitted from one person to another. As passion can be contagious, influencers who demonstrate their passion and commitment to a green initiative and may see this spill over to their social media followers."
Ding said the research team also wanted to understand whether influencer marketing could be effective even if the influencers did not display high levels of passion in their social media posts.
In a second experiment, the researchers tested how influencer goal strength and specificity may affect the social media audience in cases of high or low influencer passion. The research team analyzed data from 514 survey participants who were randomly assigned to view fictional social media posts about a beach cleanup with one of four conditions: high passion with high goal specificity, high passion with low goal specificity, low passion with high goal specificity or low passion with low goal specificity.
The research team found that goal specificity can mitigate low influencer passion, as strong, specific goals with calls to action can show that influencers are truly committed to the cause, according to Ding.
"Tourism companies and destinations can leverage green influencers in their marketing, but companies should not only look at the size of their influencers' following but also focus on what the influencers are passionate about," Ding said. "That can ultimately help businesses align their objectives with influencers who can best communicate key message points."
Ding said partnering with the wrong influencer can be costly for companies because the company would not be efficiently spending their marketing budget if an influencer were not aligned with the company's goals.
Influencers and their social media followers that align with a company's target audience while sharing an authentic passion for environmental initiatives is a best-case scenario, according to Ding.
"Positive emotions like passion can be a very powerful tool in marketing or in communications," Ding said. "By carefully choosing a passionate ambassador to communicate the right message, tourism companies can build an effective communications campaign."
Tiffany S. Legendre of the University of Houston and Harold S. Lee and Jihye "Ellie" Min of the University of North Texas collaborated on this research.
