Advertising green products on brands’ official social media accounts or mega-influencer accounts?

In the context of growing sustainability awareness on social media, this research investigates the comparative effectiveness of brand official accounts versus mega-influencer accounts in green advertising. Drawing on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), six primary studies, including one field study and five experiments, reveal that brand accounts are more effective in fostering favorable consumer attitudes toward green products. Brand accounts, perceived as credible and authoritative, are more likely to elicit central route processing, enabling deeper engagement with complex and technical information about products’ green attributes. In contrast, mega-influencer accounts primarily trigger peripheral route processing, relying on heuristic cues like charisma and popularity, which are less effective in conveying detailed sustainable claims. The research identifies elaboration and message understandability as sequential mediators, and shows that contextual factors—such as response timing, counter-persuasion, and psychological distance to environmental issues—moderate the relative effectiveness of account types. This research advances the theoretical understanding by clarifying the distinct roles of social media account types in green marketing and expanding the application of ELM in this domain. The findings offer practical implications not only for marketers, but also for policy-makers and consumer advocacy groups seeking in promote effective and credible environmental messaging on social media.