Human-like vs. cartoonish virtual influencers: Exploring design effects on trust, uniqueness, message authenticity, and sustainable purchase intentions

Sustainability and influencer marketing currently dominate the discourse in marketing research. This study studies the design of virtual influencers (VIs) for promoting pro-sustainability messages. It investigates how human-like and cartoon-like VIs affect trustworthiness and uniqueness perception. It also examines the impact of these variables on message authenticity, consumer engagement, purchase intentions, and sustainable behavior. These relationships were explored in two experimental studies. Using PROCESS MACRO study 1 investigates the impact of VI type on trust, uniqueness and message authenticity, and subsequently, the effect of message authenticity engagement leading to sustainable purchase intention. In study 2, we replicated the model with different participants and addition of variables like willingness to follow the recommendations, and green buying behavior. Both these studies indicated that when it comes to sustainability messaging, human-like VIs outperform cartoon-like VIs in terms of both trust and uniqueness. Furthermore, trust and uniqueness were found to be significant predictors of message authenticity. As expected, message authenticity directly affects engagement and willingness to follow these influencers which leads to sustainable purchase intentions and sustainable behaviors. This study is crucial to marketers exploring the use of VI in sustainability communication. It demonstrates that the anthropomorphic and congruent look of human-like VIs makes them more suitable for sustainability-related marketing campaigns.