Understanding religious influence through elevation on green advertising effectiveness among Muslims: an examination from the UAE and the USA

ABSTRACT

Given the growth of green advertising due to increasing environmental concerns, as well as the scarce religious advertising research on Muslims, this research investigates religious and cultural effects on Muslims’ purchase intentions when reacting to green advertising. The results from two experimental studies show that Islamic religious appeals exert a moderated mediation effect on Muslims’ intentions to purchase green products. Specifically, a self-transcendent emotion – elevation – conditionally mediated the effects of religious appeals via the moderation of individual Muslims’ religiosity. However, cultural appeals did not affect Muslims in the United States of America (USA) and United Arab Emirates (UAE) differently.

KEYWORDS:

• Green advertising
• Islamic religious appeals
• culture
• elevation
• religiosity
• Muslims

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This research got IRB approval from Zayed University Research Ethics Committee (ZU20_096 _F).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Zayed University [grant number STG037].

Notes on contributors

Kang Li

Kang Li (Ph.D. Michigan State University) is an Assistant Professor in Integrated Strategic Communication in the College of Communication and Media Sciences, Zayed University (ZU), UAE. Her research mainly focuses on advertising, social media, health communication, and environmental communication.

Ridwan Raji

Ridwan Raji (Ph.D. Universiti Utara Malaysia) is an Assistant Professor in Integrated Strategic Communications and Internship Coordinator of the College of Communication and Media Sciences, Zayed University, UAE. His research focuses on brand management, marketing communication, media management and social media.

Azmat Rasul

Azmat Rasul (PhD, Florida State University) is an Assistant Professor in Integrated Strategic Communication in the College of Communication and Media Sciences, Zayed University (ZU), UAE. His research focuses on the effects of strategic communication campaigns on attitudes, uses and effects of entertainment and social media, political economy of global entertainment industries, media portrayal of gender, and media regulation and policy.