The Influence of Anthropomorphic Spokescharacters on Consumers’ Recycling Intentions

THE INFLUENCE OF ANTHROPOMORPHIC SPOKESCHARACTERS ON CONSUMERS’ RECYCLING INTENTIONS

Ritesh Jain MBA (Marketing), BTech (Civil Engineering)

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy

School of Advertising, Marketing, and PR QUT Business School Queensland University of Technology 2021

Keywords

Anthropomorphism, Anthropomorphic spokescharacters, Anthropomorphic spokescharacter appeal, Branding, Brand mascots, Brand spokescharacters, Celebrity endorsement, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Cuteness, Cute appeals, Elaboration Likelihood Model, Endorsement effectiveness, Environmental communication, Environmental marketing, Experiments, Exploratory Factor Analysis, Human celebrities, Human endorsers, Humour, Humorous appeals, MANCOVA, Matchup hypothesis, MTurk study, Nostalgia, Nostalgic appeals, Online study, Past recycling behaviour, Perceived behavioural control, Product involvement, Recycling, Recycling attitude, Recycling intentions, Recycling involvement, Social marketing, Source liking, Source attractiveness, Source expertise, Source relevancy, Source Trustworthiness, Subjective norms, Structural Equation Modelling, Theory of Planned Behaviour.

The Influence of anthropomorphic spokescharacters on Consumers’ Recycling Intentions i

Abstract

Brand spokescharacters are fictional, animated characters, created by marketers as brand symbols at the end of nineteenth century for the promotion of brands. Subsequently they were considered distinct from brand symbols or logos. Originally addressed as trade characters, they appeared on product packaging and were used to give a sort of personality to manufacturers of the brands. Over the years they have acquired a prominent position as a branding element, have been found quite effective in commercial marketing and remain popular among consumers, across age and gender. Given their endorsement effectiveness in commercial marketing and the popularity of using human celebrities in social and environmental marketing, it is startling that these anthropomorphized characters (such as M&M characters, Tony the Tiger and others) have not being used in a social marketing context, especially in environmental communications as endorsers to influence environmental attitudes and behaviours of consumers. Given the risks associated with using human celebrities’ endorsers, environmental marketers should explore using these fictitious characters in their marketing communications. Therefore, the first objective of this study was to explore whether these anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters can be effective endorsers for environmental causes like recycling.

Further, past studies have attempted to define human celebrity appeal as well as appeal of animal species used in fundraising campaigns by environmental marketers. However, no study till date has attempted to unpack the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter appeal, which is surprising since for the last thirty years researchers have addressed and considered these spokescharacters as appealing. Hence, the second objective of this study was to explore the constituents and structure of anthropomorphized spokescharacter appeal. Since these brand spokescharacters have been addressed as likable, cute, humorous, and objects of nostalgia by consumers in different studies, this study proposed these dimensions as constituents of spokescharacter appeal. To achieve both the objectives of this study, a conceptual model along with associated hypotheses were developed by reviewing relevant literature.

ii The Influence of anthropomorphic spokescharacters on Consumers’ Recycling Intentions

To test the effectiveness of anthropomorphized spokescharacters in environmental communication, an experimental research method was deployed, and data collected online from U.S participants recruited from Amazon’s MTurk was analysed using a two-step procedure. First, MANCOVA was performed to find significant differences in recycling attitudes and intentions across different treatment groups. One-way independent samples MANCOVA with type of condition as factor revealed that as compared to control group, cognitive attitude towards recycling in all seven treatment conditions increased significantly. For affective attitude towards recycling and recycling intentions, differences were not significant between groups. For two-way ANOVA with gender and type of condition as independent factors, interaction effects were observed for cognitive attitude towards recycling, marginal effect for recycling intention and insignificant differences for affective attitude towards recycling. Gender main effect was reported for affective attitude towards recycling.

Post that, merged data was analysed through a Structural Equation Modelling technique using SPSS AMOS v26. Results showed that spokescharacter appeal and expertise positively influence affective attitude towards recycling and recycling intentions, mediated through its relevancy and trustworthiness dimensions. Attractiveness was found to be reducing endorsement effectiveness, confirming matchup hypothesis predictions in an environmental marketing context. The model fitted the data well with 50% of the variance in recycling intentions explained. Also, the model better explained the variance in recycling intentions of participants who were less involved with recycling (as against highly involved ones), confirming the predictions of Elaboration Likelihood Model in environmental marketing context using anthropomorphized spokescharacters. Even though not the objective of this study, some empirical evidence was found to suggest that anthropomorphized spokescharacters can be better endorsers than human ones in environmental communication.

This study offered seven theoretical contributions to the literature and seven practical implications for environmental marketers. As using anthropomorphized spokescharacters in environmental communication is an emerging area, this study has offered a number of future research directions for social and environmental marketing researchers.

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Table of Contents

Keywords...... i Abstract ...... ii Table of Contents ...... iv List of Figures ...... vi List of Tables ...... vii Statement of Original Authorship ...... ix Acknowledgements ...... x Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1 1.1 Introduction ...... 1 1.2 Background to the research ...... 1 1.3 Justification for the research ...... 2 1.4 Research Questions ...... 4 1.5 Research Methodology ...... 5 1.6 Contribution to the theory and practice ...... 6 1.7 Organization of the thesis ...... 6 Chapter 2: Literature Review...... 11 2.1 Introduction ...... 11 2.2 Anthropomorphic brand spokescharacters...... 12 2.3 Source appeal of anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters ...... 28 2.4 Source effectiveness dimensions...... 47 2.5 Influence of spokescharacter’s appeal on consumer perceptions and recycling intentions ...... 53 2.6 Mediating Effects of Source Relevancy ...... 55 2.7 2.7 Recycling Attitude and Intentions ...... 59 2.8 Research Framework and Summary of Hypotheses ...... 65 Chapter 3: Research Design ...... 69 3.1 Introduction ...... 69 3.2 Research Paradigm ...... 69 3.3 Research Methodology ...... 71 3.4 Research Method...... 73 3.5 Sampling strategy and Participants ...... 81 3.6 Instruments ...... 83 3.7 Data collection and Analysis procedure ...... 87 3.8 Ethics Consideration ...... 88

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Chapter 4: Data analysis and Results...... 89 4.1 Introduction ...... 89 4.2 Attention checks ...... 89 4.3 Descriptive statistics ...... 90 4.4 Data Examination ...... 99 4.5 Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) ...... 103 4.6 MANCOVA results ...... 110 4.7 Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)...... 115 4.8 Hypotheses testing using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) ...... 118 4.9 Conclusions ...... 133 Chapter 5: Discussions and Conclusions ...... 135 5.1 Introduction ...... 135 5.2 Overall Discussion ...... 136 5.3 Implications for theory and practice ...... 145 5.4 Limitations of the study ...... 157 5.5 Future research directions and conclusions ...... 158 Bibliography ...... 161 Appendices ...... 187 Appendix A List of brand spokescharacters ...... 187 Appendix B Pre-test Questionnaire ...... 191 Appendix C Main study Questionnaire ...... 206 Appendix D Multiple figures and tables (Appendix D-a to n) ...... 214 Appendix E Spokescharacters’ attributes by type ...... 224 Appendix F Stem and leaf plots ...... 226 Appendix G Scatter Plots ...... 227 Appendix H Variable wise items used for conducting CFA ...... 229

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List of Figures

Figure 1.1 Outline of Chapter 1 ...... 1 Figure 1.2 Chapter-wise overview of the thesis ...... 7 Figure 2.1 Overview of relevant literature for this research ...... 11 Figure 2.2 Examples of different types of popular brand spokescharacters ...... 14 Figure 2.3 Example advertisements using Smokey the Bear ...... 24 Figure 2.4 Yurukyaras in Japan...... 25 Figure 2.5 Anthropomorphic spokescharacters in Rare’s pride campaign ...... 25 Figure 2.6 RIP Character of ‘wasting water is weird’ campaign ...... 26 Figure 2.7 Conceptual model...... 65 Figure 2.8 Conceptual framework and key hypotheses ...... 67 Figure 3.1 Outline of Chapter 3 ...... 69 Figure 3.2 Different versions of recycling message used in this study ...... 78 Figure 3.3 Pre-testing of recycling slogans with Marketing HDRs at QUT Business School ...... 85 Figure 3.4 Sequence of data collection through questionnaire ...... 87 Figure 4.1 Scree Plot ...... 109 Figure 4.2 Marginal means for dependent variables ...... 111 Figure 4.3 Standardized structural path coefficients and total effects with 90% bootstrapping confidence intervals (attractiveness included in the model) ...... 119 Figure 4.4 Standardized structural path coefficients and total effects with 90% bootstrapping confidence intervals (excluding attractiveness) ...... 121 Figure 4.5 Standardized structural path coefficients and 90% bootstrapping confidence intervals (with control variables) ...... 127 Figure 4.6 Comparison between low involved and high involved participants (standardized structural path coefficients) ...... 129 Figure 5.1 Outline of Chapter 5 ...... 135

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List of Tables

Table 2.1 Past studies on influence of spokescharacters’ attributes on advertising and brand outcomes ...... 19 Table 2.2 Attributes of spokescharacters used as predictors of advertising outcomes ...... 21 Table 2.3 Discussion of spokescharacter’s appeal in brand spokescharacter literature ...... 29 Table 2.4 Summary of past research investigating antecedents of recycling intentions ...... 62 Table 3.1 Summary of elements of the research design ...... 72 Table 3.2 Eight experimental groups in this study...... 77 Table 3.3 Sampling strategy ...... 81 Table 3.4 Different recycling slogans pre-tested with Marketing HDR students ...... 84 Table 3.5 Variables used in this study ...... 86 Table 3.6 Past studies for sourcing variables for spokescharacter’s appeal construct ...... 87 Table 3.7 Data analysis procedures used in this study ...... 87 Table 4.1 Condition-wise deletion of responses after attention check ...... 90 Table 4.2 Final sample size for descriptive statistics – by group ...... 90 Table 4.3 Gender-wise count of participants ...... 91 Table 4.4 Education-wise count of participants ...... 92 Table 4.5 Income-wise count of participants ...... 92 Table 4.6 Control variables for this study ...... 93 Table 4.7 Mean scores on spokescharacter attributes ...... 95 Table 4.8 Cronbach’s Alpha for all variables measured by multiple items in this study ...... 99 Table 4.9 EFA results using Principal Component Analysis and Varimax rotation ...... 106 Table 4.10 Result comparison for PCA and PAF ...... 107 Table 4.11 Cronbach’s Alpha ...... 108 Table 4.12 Factor analysis results using PCA and Varimax rotation ...... 108 Table 4.13 Number of cases in each cell of two factor (Type of condition and Gender) MANCOVA ...... 113 Table 4.14 Results of CFA ...... 117 Table 4.15 #Convergent and Discriminant validity for the model ...... 117 Table 4.16 Results of CFA (with six constructs) ...... 118

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Table 4.17 #Convergent and Discriminant validity for model ...... 118 Table 4.18 Standardized path coefficients ...... 119 Table 4.19 Model fit indices with attractiveness dimension included ...... 120 Table 4.20 Standardized path coefficients ...... 121 Table 4.21 Model fit indices without attractiveness dimension ...... 122 Table 4.22 Serial mediation effects of trustworthiness on affective attitude ...... 126 Table 4.23 #Serial mediation analysis ...... 126 Table 4.24 Standardized path coefficients ...... 128 Table 4.25 Model fit indices ...... 128 Table 4.26 Standardized path coefficient: low involved and high involved participants ...... 130 Table 4.27 Bootstrapping confidence intervals: Low vs High involved groups ...... 131 Table 4.28 Summary results of all hypotheses tested ...... 132 Table 5.1 Summary of outcome of research hypotheses ...... 136 Table 5.2 Research gap, and contribution to theory and practice ...... 153

viii The Influence of anthropomorphic spokescharacters on Consumers’ Recycling Intentions QUT Verified Signature

Acknowledgements

‘Rome was not built in a day. But they were laying the bricks every hour.’ – John Heywood. During my research journey, I have realized the in-depth meaning of this famous quote. For the last eighteen months, I was laying the bricks every hour, and progressing steadily with periods marked by low phases, especially during the COVID lockdown. But then I realized that the bricks have come together to create a beautiful monument, i.e., this thesis. And I was not alone in this creative work; other hands were also laying bricks with me!

First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge as a mentor, friend, and guide, my principal supervisor, Dr Edwina Luck, for giving me complete freedom to explore the topic, add new directions, and for regularly motivating me since the start of this research journey. She was also instrumental in keeping me on track and escaping the ‘rabbit holes’! My sincere thanks also go to Dr Sven Tuzovic, my associate supervisor, for working so diligently on each and every aspect of this thesis. Without his valuable inputs and guidance, I think this thesis would not have been completed. I am indebted to both of them for making me understand what research is and letting me experiment with ideas.

I would like to acknowledge the valuable feedbacks I received from two anonymous examiners, which greatly helped me in improving the overall thesis presentation as well as address some shortcomings in different chapters.

I am also thankful to my course instructors, Dr Craig Furneaux, Dr Deanna Grant-Smith, Dr Nerina Jimmieson, Dr Peter O’Conner and Dr Emma Nelms and to the library staff who taught me the basic research skills, without which, I would not have undertaken this thesis. Special thanks to Dr Shane Mathews for guiding me in my data analysis. I am also grateful to Dr Stephen Cox, Director of HDR studies for giving his valuable time and input whenever I asked for it, and to Dr Carmen Keates, for patiently reading my literature review chapter and offering guidance to shape it.

I should not forget my fellow HDR colleagues, who helped me in questionnaire wording, pre-testing, and offering inputs from time to time. Also, my sincere thanks to the research participants of this study, who have taken time to fill out the questionnaire. I also acknowledge the contribution of professional editor, Diane

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Kolomeitz, for providing copyediting and proofreading services according to QUT approved guidelines.

‘God doesn’t give you what you want... He creates the opportunity for us to do so.’- Anonymous. To the Almighty, I thank you for giving me the internal strength to continue to move on during the last eighteen months. I am also grateful to my family members: my late father Shri Brij Mohan Lal Jain for being a source of continuous motivation and showering me with his heavenly blessings: this thesis is dedicated to him; my mother Shrimati Veena Devi Jain who regularly told me to finish the work on time; and my brothers, Manish Jain and Prashant Jain, for their support, guidance, and encouragement. Last but not the least, my heartfelt thanks go to my lovely life partner, Deepali, who has taken care of me, the home, and our children, so that I could work wholeheartedly on my thesis. Without her support, it would have been impossible to put the bricks together. And yes, thanks to my lovely children, Geet and Nevaan, for providing me with hugs and kisses during breaks, so that I could go on with full enthusiasm!

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Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 INTRODUCTION

This thesis focuses on the influence of anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters (i.e., fictional characters created by marketers including brand mascots) and on consumers’ attitudes and intentions to recycle. To achieve these aims, Chapter 1 commences with a discussion of the research background, followed by the justification for the research. Based on this critical review, two research questions are outlined. Next, the research methodology is briefly summarized. The chapter ends with discussion of the research contributions. Figure 1.1 provides a visual overview of this chapter.

Figure 1.1 Outline of Chapter 1

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Research Background

1.3 Justification for the research

1.4 Research Questions

1.5 Research Methodology

1.6 Contributions to Theory and Practice

1.7 Organization of Thesis

1.2 BACKGROUND TO THE RESEARCH

Environmental problems and climate change issues have become more prevalent and require immediate attention. One of the most serious environmental problems associated with rising population, affluence and rapid urbanization is the generation of an enormous amount of household waste (Mahar et al., 2007). With increased waste comes a plethora of environmental problems such as water and soil pollution, greenhouse gas emission, loss of biodiversity, and precious land resources (Miller & Spoolman, 2011). Also, managing the increasing amount

and complexity of household waste is becoming a daunting task for city councils (Webster, 2012). A major concern regarding these environmental problems is that it results from the daily activities of humans such as overconsumption, improper waste disposal, travel, and energy usage (Ripple et al., 2019).

As one solution to these concerns, recycling has emerged as a promising approach to reduce waste going to landfills (Oztekin et al., 2017). However, recycling rates remain low and with increased consumerism and wealth of nations, per capita waste generation will only increase in future. Hence, managing global waste and encouraging recycling has become a critical global issue (Varotto & Spagnolli, 2017). One strategy to enhance recycling rates is to change consumers’ attitudes and behaviour towards such action.

As celebrity endorsement has been quite effective in influencing consumers’ attitudes and behaviours towards commercial products (Amos et al., 2008; Erdogan, 1999), environmental organizations have associated themselves with human celebrities as endorsers (Anderson, 2011; Boykoff & Goodman, 2009). Anthropomorphic brand spokescharacters, the fictional characters created by marketers to promote brands (Phillips, 1996), are also popular as product endorsers in commercial marketing (Phillips et al., 2019), but it is surprising that they have not been used as endorsers by environmental marketers, given they are liked by children and adults alike, have acquired celebrity like status, are considered trustworthy by consumers, positively influence brand attitudes and behavioural intentions, and are relatively safer to use than human celebrities (Callcott & Alvey, 1991; Dotz & Morton, 1996; Folse et al., 2012; Garretson & Niedrich, 2004). Therefore, this study focuses on examining the influence of brand spokescharacters as endorser in recycling message on consumers’ attitudes and intentions to recycle. Further, this study investigates attributes of anthropomorphic spokescharacter appeal and its influence on the recycling intentions of consumers.

1.3 JUSTIFICATION FOR THE RESEARCH

Whereas human celebrities have been used in both commercial and non-commercial marketing contexts, a review of literature indicates that the use of anthropomorphized spokescharacters has been limited to commercial marketing only. Examples include brand spokescharacters such as Tony the Tiger, Mr. Clean and the Michelin Man. However, to the best knowledge of the researcher, no prior notable research work has explored the effectiveness of brand spokescharacters, in the context of environmental communication, to influence consumers’ pro-environmental behaviours. Even though environmental marketers have used

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human celebrities to reach and expand their audience, they come with their own risks such as negative public perception about hidden motives, self-interests of celebrities in associating with the cause (Domínguez, 2010; Folkes, 1988; Forehand & Grier, 2003), involvement in controversies and sudden change in image (Kaikati, 1987), loss of popularity and fan following, and lower credibility due to multiple endorsements (Amos et al., 2008).

On the other hand, anthropomorphic brand spokescharacters are liked by consumers of all age and across gender (Phillips et al., 2019), are generally trusted by consumers (Dotz & Morton, 1996; Garretson & Niedrich, 2004; Luo et al., 2006), generate humour, and as a result create positive affect towards the endorser (Callcott & Lee, 1995) and prime nostalgic feelings (Callcott & Lee, 1995; Garretson & Niedrich, 2004), leading to a positive emotional state (Wildschut et al., 2006). Numerous studies have found that using anthropomorphic brand spokescharacters enhances message effectiveness, in terms of higher attitude towards ad, brand, brand recall and brand trust, and behavioural intentions (Folse et al., 2012; Garretson & Burton, 2005; Luo et al., 2006; Pashupati, 2009; Phillips & Lee, 2005; Stafford et al., 2002). Hence, it makes sense to explore their effectiveness as endorser in environmental communication.

Past research has also attempted to define the human celebrity appeal (Lunardo et al., 2015; Stever, 1991; Wohlfeil et al., 2019) and constituents of animal species’ appeal (Macdonald et al., 2015; Macdonald et al., 2017), which guide environmental marketers to select appropriate animal species to attract a wider audience for donations. However, no notable research work so far has attempted to study the appeal of anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters, which may guide environmental marketers to select appropriate ones from plethora of existing spokescharacters or design their own ones. Since consumers find these characters likable, cute, humorous, and objects of nostalgia, it is proposed that these attributes will constitute a spokescharacter’s appeal.

A further point to note is that social and environmental communication predominantly uses fear, hope, optimism, and guilt appeals to achieve attitude and behaviour change (Jäger & Eisend, 2013; Lee et al., 2017; Witte & Allen, 2000), which may sometimes generate defensive reactions such as denial, submission, and hopelessness among consumers (Coulter & Pinto, 1995; Moore & Harris, 1996). Further, these appeals may work only for consumers with prior positive attitude towards the advertised behaviour (Jäger & Eisend, 2013), for females (Noble et al., 2014), or the efficacy may depend on issue proximity or level of environmental

consciousness in consumers (Chang, 2012; Lee et al., 2017). Environmental communication has explored use of celebrities, politicians, military leaders, as well as informal communicators such as religious leaders, family members, neighbours as source of information (Olmedo et al., 2020; Sleeth-Keppler et al., 2017). However, use of anthropomorphic spokescharacters have not been explored till date, given positive outcome of using anthropomorphism in environmental context (Tam et al., 2013). Further, recent research work has reported positive outcomes of using cute, humorous, and nostalgic appeals for promoting prosocial and/or pro- environmental behaviour (Jäger & Eisend, 2013; Kaltenbacher & Drews, 2020; Nabi, 2016; Wang et al., 2017; Yoon & Tinkham, 2013; Zhang et al., 2020; Zhou et al., 2012), suggesting an alternate message strategy. Therefore, the use of anthropomorphic spokescharacters as endorsers in recycling messages is tantamount to using multiple appeals together (i.e., humour, cuteness, nostalgia), which, in turn, may influence consumers’ attitudes and intentions. No prior research work has studied the impact of these appeals together.

Furthermore, source effectiveness dimensions that include trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness have been used mainly to evaluate human celebrities’ endorsement effectiveness in commercial advertising (Amos et al., 2008). However, these dimensions have not been studied in the context of anthropomorphic spokescharacters and their effectiveness in influencing pro-environmental intentions of consumers (Olmedo et al., 2020).

Another argument to explore use of anthropomorphic spokescharacters can be from the schema incongruity theory perspective (Mandler, 1982). Given that the anthropomorphic spokescharacters have not been used much by environmental communicators, the presence of these characters in environmental message can lead to more elaboration on the message, which can result in higher engagement with the cause (Fleck et al., 2012; Mandler, 1982).

Given these arguments, it is justified to conduct this research study, exploring influence of anthropomorphic spokescharacters as endorsers in recycling message on recycling attitude and intentions.

1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of the literature, two key research questions were developed to guide the foregoing research. The first research question addresses the role of anthropomorphized spokescharacters in the context of shaping pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours of consumers. The main focus here is on the topic of recycling. The second research

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question investigates the different constituents that make up appeal of anthropomorphized spokescharacters. The two research questions RQ1 and RQ2 are presented below.

• RQ1: What are the key constituents that form the appeal of anthropomorphized spokescharacters? • RQ2: What is the influence of brand spokescharacters on consumers’ pro- environmental attitudes and behaviour (specifically, intentions to recycle)?

1.5 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In this study, relevant literature and existing theories were reviewed and used for developing research hypotheses. Subsequently, data was collected online and analysed using appropriate statistical tools. Accordingly, this study adopts a positivist or classical deductive approach to the research (Wahyuni, 2012), using quantitative methodology (Cohen et al., 2000). The questionnaire was designed using Qualtrics platform and data was collected online (cross-sectional study) using Amazon’s MTurk platform, which is currently one of the commonly used platforms to source participants for social science research (Buhrmester et al., 2018; Chandler & Shapiro, 2016). The sampling frame was U.S. participants, who are registered on Amazon’s MTurk platform, and are at least 18 years old.

The research adopted an experimental design. Accordingly, participants were randomly assigned to one of seven treatment conditions, which differed based on the version of recycling message to which they were exposed (six different spokescharacters as endorser in recycling message conditions and one recycling logo condition). Participants were requested to respond to the survey questions post exposure to the recycling message. The experiment also included a control group, i.e., participants who were not exposed to any recycling message and directly reported their attitudes and intentions towards recycling. Results were analysed using multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA), which helped answer the RQ2 of the study, what is the influence of brand spokescharacters on consumers’ pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour (specifically, intentions to recycle)? as the means on attitude and intentions of participants in spokescharacters condition will be compared to mean score of participants in recycling logo group. Upon the completion of the MANCOVA analysis, data was merged from the six different spokescharacter conditions and the conceptual model developed for this study was tested using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), which again helped in answering the RQ2 of this study as the conceptual model captures the influence of spokescharacter appeal

and expertise on recycling intentions. Exploratory factor analysis of spokescharacter appeal construct helped to answer the RQ1 of the study, i.e. what are the key constituents that form the appeal of anthropomorphized spokescharacters?

1.6 CONTRIBUTION TO THE THEORY AND PRACTICE

This study makes several theoretical contributions. First, this study proposed and empirically showed that spokescharacter liking, humour, cuteness, and nostalgia constitute its appeal, which is a single dimensional construct. Second, it was shown that presence of brand spokescharacters in a recycling message can enhance recycling intentions. Third, the study confirmed the matchup hypothesis predictions, using anthropomorphized spokescharacters in environmental marketing context. Fourth, the predictions of Elaboration Likelihood Model have been confirmed in an environmental marketing context using anthropomorphized spokescharacters. Fifth, this study has shown that the relevancy and the perceived trustworthiness of the brand spokescharacters can be controlled by marketers by manipulating appearance of the character and giving it an expert personality.

There are practical significances of this study as well. First, the findings of the study can inform environmental marketers to select existing anthropomorphized spokescharacters or design new ones. Second, an alternate communication strategy has been proposed for environmental marketers, who generally use fear, guilt, and shame appeals to elicit behaviour change. Third, even though not empirically tested, the findings of this study suggest that schools may use the anthropomorphized characters to sensitize children towards environmental issues. Similarly, government departments and city councils can use these characters to engage their target audience by developing and running advertisement campaigns featuring the anthropomorphized spokescharacters. Fourth, as the anthropomorphized characters offer a lot of product merchandising opportunities, such as soft toys, t-shirts, mugs, stationary etc. (Walker, 2008) the environmental marketers may engage with their target audience by launching spokescharacters’ merchandised products.

1.7 ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS

This thesis is organized into five chapters (see Figure 1.2).

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Figure 1.2 Chapter-wise overview of the thesis

Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Literature Review

• Background of • Anthropomorphic brand research spokescharacters: background, role • Justification of in commercial and environmental

research marketing • Research questions • Source appeal of anthropomorphic • Research spokescharacter: Cuteness, humour, methodology and nostalgia • Source effectiveness dimensions: • Contribution to theory Trustworthiness, expertise, and and practice attractiveness • Influence of spokescharacter appeal Chapter 3: on recycling intention Research Design • Mediating effects of source relevancy • Recycling attitude and intentions: • Research paradigm control variables for the study, and • Research methodology recycling involvement as moderator • Research method • Research framework and summary • Sampling strategy and of the hypotheses participants • Instruments • Data collection and analysis procedures • Ethics considerations

Chapter 5: Discussions and conclusions Chapter 4: Data Analysis • Overall discussions on hypotheses results • Attention checks • Implication for theory • Descriptive statistics and practice • Data examination • Limitations of the study • EFA • Future research • MANCOVA analysis directions and • CFA conclusions • Hypotheses testing using SEM • Conclusions

Chapter 2 provides a comprehensive review of the literature on brand spokescharacters, including their origin, types, and use in commercial marketing. Several examples of anthropomorphized characters in environmental campaigns are also presented. Next, celebrity endorsement literature is reviewed with regards to the application of source effectiveness dimensions (i.e., trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness) in commercial marketing. Third, literature on spokescharacter appeal for pro-environmental causes is reviewed. This includes the effects of cuteness, humour, and nostalgic appeals on pro-environmental behaviours. The chapter concludes with a discussion of recycling intentions.

Chapter 3 presents the research design of the study. It begins with describing the research paradigm adopted, followed by a discussion on the research methodology. After that, the research method is described in detail along with the sampling strategy and participants of the study. Then, instruments used for this research are specified, followed by data analysis procedures. Finally, ethical considerations are discussed.

Chapter 4 summarizes the results of the study. First, it is discussed how attention checks were carried out followed by the descriptive statistics of variables used in the study. Then, the data examination procedure is described in detail (i.e., treatment of missing data, outlier analysis, data transformations, and checking multivariate analysis assumptions). Next, results of MANCOVA analysis are presented. The proceeding sections discuss the results of the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), as well as results of the hypotheses testing using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM).

Chapter 5 presents a detailed discussion of the findings and their implications for theory and practice. Limitations of the research study are presented, and future research directions are outlined. The chapter ends with conclusions.

Chapter 1: Introduction 9

Chapter 2: Literature Review

2.1 INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1 outlined the rationale and research aims of the present thesis. This chapter provides comprehensive literature review relevant to this study based on two main research streams: (1) branding and communication and (2) social marketing. In branding and marketing communication literature stream, use of anthropomorphism and specifically brand spokescharacters to accomplish positive attitudinal and behavioural outcomes is well documented. Similarly, use of human celebrities and application of source effectiveness dimensions of trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness to evaluate celebrity endorsement effectiveness is well-researched. In social marketing literature stream, use of cuteness, humour, and nostalgic appeal in environmental communication is a recent development and researchers have called for more research work in this field. Hence, this study explored if brand spokescharacters can be effective as celebrity endorsers in environmental communication, taking recycling behaviour as context, given they are dubbed as cute, humorous, and objects of nostalgia and can produce joint effects of three appeals. Figure 2.1 illustrates the interplay of the two main literature streams.

Figure 2.1 Overview of relevant literature for this research

Source: Developed for this thesis

First, the domain of anthropomorphic brand spokescharacters is reviewed including definition, origin, types, and their use in commercial marketing and environmental campaigns. Next, a detailed synthesis is presented of research that has studied the attributes of brand spokescharacters. This is followed by literature on source effectiveness dimensions to evaluate human endorsers and how they may be relevant in the context of anthropomorphic brand spokescharacters. Further, the source appeal of anthropomorphized spokescharacters is proposed and relevant literature on using cuteness, humorous, and nostalgic appeals in social and environmental marketing is presented. Furthermore, the chapter looks at literature on consumers’ recycling attitudes and behaviours. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the conceptual model and hypotheses.

2.2 ANTHROPOMORPHIC BRAND SPOKESCHARACTERS

2.2.1 Definition, origin, and types of brand spokescharacters Brand spokescharacters were introduced in the late nineteenth century (as trade characters) during the era of mass production, to distinguish one product from the other. During the early 1900s, as the factory-made goods replaced the locally produced goods sold in containers (Morgan, 1986), packaging became an important element, through which manufacturers differentiated their products from competitors. Another reason for introducing such trade characters was to give a sort of personality to large companies; something like that of local merchants from whom people bought goods earlier. Such humanization of companies through trade characters helped gain consumers’ trust for new products produced at far-off locations (Callcott & Lee, 1995).

It is the human love for personification, where an object or nonhuman entity is represented as having human qualities, that has led to the growth of spokescharacters (Callcott & Lee, 1995). Many different explanations have been offered as to why humans tend to anthropomorphize by attributing human characteristics or behaviours to gods, animals, and objects. Notable among them was the primitive need to identify potential predators - for instance, rocks appeared as bears and trees as tigers - as it was in the best interest of ancient humans (Guthrie & Guthrie, 1995). Anthropomorphism is shown to increase the liking of the products (Aggarwal & McGill, 2007), advertisements, brands, and purchase intentions (Hart & Royne, 2017). Even though brand spokescharacters have been depicted as product personified, recent research indicates that the level of personification has been decreasing in print advertisements (Phillips et al., 2019). Thus, it is apparent that spokescharacters evolved with

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changes to human nature and commercial necessity. Even though human celebrities as endorsers remain a popular choice among advertisers, the high cost of hiring and lack of control over them have resulted in the development and usage of created spokescharacters (Sertoglu et al., 2014).

In terms of its’ meaning, (Phillips, 1996, p. 146) defined a brand spokescharacter (then referred to as trade character) as “fictional, animate being or animated object that has been created for the promotion of a product, service, or idea. A trade character does not have to be a legal trademark.” Callcott and Lee (1995) stated that two criteria must be fulfilled to consider any advertising image as a ‘brand spokescharacter’. Firstly, the character must be used consistently with the product it advertises for a fairly long period of time. This means that it excludes those objects that are used for a single advertising campaign. Secondly, the spokescharacter must have recognizable ‘character’, ‘trait’ or ‘persona’, a ‘personality’, which consumers can perceive easily. Thus, it excludes brand symbols or logos.

Based on spokescharacter’s appearance, (Callcott & Lee, 1995) defined two types of spokescharacters: human and non-human spokescharacters. Human spokescharacters can be represented either as real illustration such as Quaker Oats man, Betty Crocker, and Morton Salt Girl or as caricature such as the Gold Dust twins, Campbell kids, and Sunny Jim. The purpose of making a caricature is to increase the character’s attractiveness or humour quotient. Similarly, non-human spokescharacters are classified into three types: animals (e.g., Tony the Tiger, Smokey the Bear, Joe Camel, Morris the cat, Bon Ami chick, and Sinclair dinosaur); mythical beings from folklore traditions (e.g., giants such as Green Giant, elves such as Keebler, genies such as Mr Clean, vampires such as Count Chocula); and product personification where the product itself is depicted as having human qualities (e.g., California Raisins, Mr Peanut, and M&M spokes-candies).

Another criterion used by Callcott and Lee (1995) to classify spokescharacter is origin (i.e., whether advertising or non-advertising). Celebrity spokescharacters are those that have non-advertising origin and have been created for some other purpose, rather than to promote the brand, for example, Garfield, Simpsons, Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters. Contrarily, non-celebrity spokescharacters are the ones with advertising origin, where they have been created specifically to promote the brand, for example, Tony the Tiger, Michelin Man, Mr Peanut, M&M characters, Mr Clean etc. Figure 2.2 depicts some of the famous non- celebrity spokescharacters and their types.

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Figure 2.2 Examples of different types of popular brand spokescharacters

Tony the Tiger Jolly Green Giant Michelin Man Morton’s Salt Girl

Charlie the Tuna Mr. Clean M&M spokes-candies Flo

Animal Mythical Product personified Human spokescharacters spokescharacters spokescharacters spokescharacters

Two further criteria suggested by Callcott and Lee (1995) to classify spokescharacters are the medium through which spokescharacters connect with consumers, such as print, film, radio and merchandise, and promotion. This captures either active promotion where spokescharacters are shown speaking for the product or using the product, or passive promotion where a spokescharacter is used on product packaging only, or as a symbol to represent products’ unique selling proposition (e.g., Morton Salt girl). As mentioned earlier, brand spokescharacters provide a personality to the brand, product, or company that they endorse. In order to be effective, they must convey their meaning clearly to the consumers, i.e., what qualities they represent (McCracken, 1986). As animals represent universal human qualities; for e.g., fox is cunning, bee is industrious, cheetah is fast, and rabbit has endless energy (Robin, 1932), they are frequently adopted by organizations as spokescharacters.

Such cultural meanings represented by animals are readily transferred to the brand these spokescharacters represent (McCracken, 1989). A review of 1,151 brand spokescharacters by (Brown, 2010) found that the nearer the animal is to humans both physically and psychologically, the more popular it is as a choice for a spokescharacter. Another point is the

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geographic variation in preference for animals, where Australia likes kangaroos, America likes eagles and horses, while India prefers elephants (Brown, 2010). The next section describes why spokescharacters have been a popular choice in commercial advertising.

2.2.2 The role of brand spokescharacters in commercial advertising Spokescharacters have been used in advertisements for products targeting both children and adults (Callcott & Lee, 1994; Phillips & Gyoerick, 1999; Phillips et al., 2019). Macklin (1996) reported that visual cues such as spokescharacters improved memory for brand-related information and brand attitudes among children. Jenkin et al. (2014) showed that ‘promotional characters’ (i.e., both celebrities and non-celebrity characters) are one of the most commonly used strategies on television to promote food products to children. Phillips et al. (2019) conducted a content analysis of print advertisements (appearing in popular magazines) and showed that the percentage of ads with spokescharacters has significantly increased from 7.8% during the period 1950-1990 to 14.1% in the year 2015. Further, it was reported that there was no significant difference between the prevalence of spokescharacter advertisements in magazines directed towards both men and women, suggesting that advertisers find such spokescharacters appropriate for both genders. Also, spokescharacters have been used to promote both low involved (e.g., food products) and high involved products such as insurance, tires, financial services among others (Bhutada et al., 2017; Pashupati, 2009). As recycling messages target children and adults alike with no special consideration of gender, this finding suggests that recycling messages with brand spokescharacters may appeal across age and gender.

Brand spokescharacters are popular with consumers as they represent unambiguous qualities. They remain predictable and constant, and always mean the same. Therefore, they appear trustworthy and reliable (Callcott & Alvey, 1991). In other words, brand spokescharacters can act as a bridging link between consumers and brands. They can also be meaningful brand representatives due to their identifiability and human-like qualities and personalities (Aaker et al., 2004). In their book, Dotz and Morton (1996) documented that spokescharacters can create perceptions of trust among consumers that affect their attitudes and behaviours. In fact, cartoon characters can create an aura of trust (Van Auken & Lonial, 1985) and trustworthy endorsers can enhance message effectiveness, in terms of attitude and intentions (Bergkvist & Zhou, 2016).

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Further, Fournier (1998) suggested that brand spokescharacters can enhance brand equity and perceived brand relationships through their personalities. Brands use their spokescharacters on social media platforms such as Twitter to forge relationship and enhance two-way communication with consumers, which can enhance message effectiveness (Kinney & Ireland, 2015). Consumers can infer and assess the personality traits of the spokescharacters, thereby transforming brands from being mere products to psychological partners. Fournier (1998) also stated that spokescharacter traits can promote favourable brand impressions. These findings suggest that using brand spokescharacters for promoting recycling may result in consumers getting emotionally attached with the cause by perceiving these spokescharacters as part of their life. This possibility is further strengthened by the findings of extant studies which explored how brand spokescharacters can engender positive emotions in consumers. For instance, it was found that brand spokescharacters are able to emotionally connect with the consumers, thereby creating an emotional bond between customer and the brand they represent and that increases the persuasive ability of the spokescharacter (Phillips, 1996). As a result, even though some spokescharacters may not match the product attributes, they can still be used successfully to represent the brand, (e.g., Aflac Duck and GEICO gecko) by emotionally connecting with the consumers through anthropomorphism (Phillips, 2014), i.e., seeing the human in non-human forms (Aggarwal & McGill, 2007).

Luo et al. (2006) found that the presence of an anthropomorphized character in a website significantly improved the score on three items used to measure website effectiveness, such as pleasantness of website, trustworthiness of online payment process, and willingness to give payment details. Pashupati (2009) reported that brands that use brand spokescharacters in their DTC advertising for prescription drugs have higher recall in their category as compared to those who do not use the characters. In the study conducted by Heiser et al. (2008), it was found that consumers rated advertisements containing cartoon spokespersons as more creative than an identical advertisement with a human spokesperson, and this perceived creativity led to significantly higher ratings on attitude towards the ad, brand, and purchase intentions. Stafford et al. (2002) reported that animated characters are great attention-getters in advertisements and can influence affective attitudinal components. They reported that when anthropomorphic spokescharacter was used for promoting hedonic service, attitude towards ad (but not purchase intention) was higher than under human celebrity, employee, or customer as endorser condition. Folse et al. (2012) in their study found that the personality traits of sincerity and excitement of a spokescharacter positively affect brand trust and attitude towards the brand,

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which in turn affected willingness to pay a price premium. They also found that the appearance of brand spokescharacters can influence brand trust and attitude towards advertising, which in turn affect behavioural intentions. Spokescharacters enhances brand likability, which positively influences ad and brand attitudes (Phillips & Lee, 2005). If likable spokescharacters endorse a brand, there is higher chance that it will be purchased.

Garretson and Niedrich (2004) found that spokescharacter’s perceived expertise and nostalgia are positively related to spokescharacter trust, which leads to favourable attitude towards the brand. Trivedi (2018) reported that spokescharacter attractiveness has the highest significant impact on attitude towards the ad and attitude towards the brand. Overall, all these studies suggest that the presence of spokescharacters in a recycling message may enhance message attention, generate positive reactions and recycling attitude, which may lead to higher intention to recycle.

For marketers, another advantage of using brand spokescharacters in advertising for a prolonged period of time is priming of nostalgia in consumers. People usually have a positive feeling toward some part of their past life, especially from childhood and adolescence (Davis, 1979). As a result, consumers have strong emotional ties with the spokescharacters advertised during their childhood. If these spokescharacters are still in use, consumers transfer their loyal feelings towards the spokescharacter, to the brand (Horovitz, 1991). Some brand spokescharacters are in existence for more than a century (Callcott & Lee, 1995) and hence these characters when used in recycling messages could appeal to different generations by priming nostalgic feelings.

In a study of 809 TV commercials conducted by a commercial copy testing firm, it was found that commercials with brand spokescharacters or personalities were more effective in changing brand preference of consumers than the commercials that did not have them (Steward & Furse, 1986). The findings of this study imply that spokescharacters are quite effective in influencing people's choice and behaviour. Therefore, it is expected that the use of such spokescharacters in a recycling message may motivate people to adopt pro-environmental behaviours such as recycling.

Spokescharacters are also able to connect the product, packaging, and advertising together (Kleppner, 1966). For example, Jolly Green Giant and the Little Green Sprout - both spokescharacters of Minnesota Valley Canning Company - appear on product packaging, TV commercials, print advertising as well as on coupons. Spokescharacters further result in

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advertising continuity; that is, by appearing in different advertisements, a spokescharacter helps consumers identify the brand, and therefore this results in meaningful campaigns (Bohen, 1981). Garretson and Burton (2005) showed that using relevant spokescharacters in IMC campaigns can enhance brand attitude. Similarly, spokescharacters can result in product line continuity, by appearing for different products made under the same brand, such as Keebler’s Elves (Phillips, 1996). Spokescharacters also provide an opportunity to turn a product into a positive image, as in the cases of M&M spokes-candies, California Raisins and Mr Peanut (Callcott & Alvey, 1991). Today, environmental organizations can choose from a host of different communication channels to reach their target audience, such as television, print media like newspapers or magazines, social media, billboards etc. By using an anthropomorphic spokescharacter in their communication across different media, environmental organizations can hope to better organize their communication campaign and influence the general public more effectively.

In a qualitative study conducted by (Callcott & Phillips, 1996), all the participants interviewed mentioned that they noticed and watched ads featuring brand spokescharacters more than the ads that do not feature them. People generally love cartoons and are generally attracted towards them, hence using spokescharacters can result in visibility effect in advertising (Callcott & Alvey, 1991). They further reported that the more likable the brand spokescharacter is, the greater the respondents’ intent to purchase the product promoted by that spokescharacter. Even Huang et al. (2011) found significant positive association between spokescharacter attractiveness and liking, which in turn has a significant positive impact on developing positive attitude towards brand, and advertising. Table 2.1 summarizes past research that has studied the effects of brand spokescharacters and Table 2.2 lists attributes of spokescharacters discussed in literature.

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Table 2.1 Past studies on influence of spokescharacters’ attributes on advertising and brand outcomes

Study Attributes of brand spokescharacters Results Callcott and Phillips Liking, physical appearance and humour Humour leads to character liking; liking towards (1996) spokescharacters leads to ad attention, positive feelings towards brand, and purchase intentions. Callcott and Alvey Spokescharacter liking, Celebrity status of characters negatively influence product (1991) spokescharacter type (celebrity vs. non- recall, higher liking for character leads to higher purchase celebrity) intentions. Folse et al. (2012) Spokescharacter sincerity, excitement, and Sincerity and excitement personality traits of a competence (Aaker’s brand personality spokescharacter positively affect brand trust and attitude dimensions) towards the brand, which in turn directly affect willingness to pay a price premium; appearance of brand spokescharacters can influence brand trust and attitude towards advertising, which in turn affect behavioural intentions. Garretson and Niedrich Spokescharacter’s expertise, relevance and Spokescharacter’s perceived expertise and nostalgia are (2004) nostalgia positively related to brand attitude, mediated through spokescharacter trust. Huang et al. (2011) Spokescharacter attraction, nostalgia, Spokescharacter attractiveness, nostalgia and trustworthiness, liking trustworthiness leads to character liking, which in turn influence product attitude and brand attitude. Heiser et al. (2008) Two type of spokesperson appearance (real Consumers rated advertisements containing cartoon human vs. cartoon) characters as more creative than an identical ad without cartoon characters and the perceived creative print advertisement generated significantly higher ratings on attitude towards ad, brand, and higher purchase intentions. Kyung et al. (2010) Aaker’s brand personality dimensions of Spokescharacter expertise was predicted by sincerity, sincerity, excitement, competence, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness; sophistication, ruggedness trustworthiness was predicted only by sincerity and

competence; attractiveness was strongly predicted by competence and sophistication and weakly by excitement and ruggedness. Luo et al. (2006) Two type of facial appearance of character Presence of spokescharacter in a website significantly (human-like vs. cartoon) improved the score on pleasantness of website, trustworthiness of online payment process, and willingness to give payment details. Malik and Guptha (2014) Friendliness, uniqueness, humour, emotional Emotional touch, attractiveness, trustworthiness, touch, trustworthy, loyalty, attractiveness friendliness, and uniqueness of brand characters impact consumers’ buying decision. Mize and Kinney (2008) Expertise, attraction, trustworthiness, The level of consumer-brand relationship, as measured by familiarity, and believability the brand relationship quality scale (Fournier, 1996), has a significant positive relationship with familiarity and credibility of character, attitude towards character and brand. Hence, familiar and credible spokescharacters engender high levels of consumer-brand relationship. Phillips and Lee (2005) Level of animation Level of animation significantly predict attitude towards (movement of character and sound of character, website, and perceived entertainment. character) Stafford et al. (2002) Four spokesperson type (customer, Higher rating on the attractiveness trait of source employee, human celebrity and created credibility leads to positive attitude towards an ad. cartoon character) Presence of cartoon characters can make the ad distinctive and generate higher ratings on advertising outcomes such as attitude towards ad, brand, and higher purchase intention. Steward and Furse Not applicable Presence of brand spokescharacters led to higher intention (1986) to change brand preference. Trivedi (2018) Animated character’s attractiveness, Spokescharacter attractiveness has the most significant nostalgia, trustworthiness impact on attitude towards the ad and attitude towards the brand.

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Table 2.2 Attributes of spokescharacters used as predictors of advertising outcomes

(2014)

Attributes

Kyung et al. Kyung (2010) et al. (2012) al. Folse et (2004) and Niedrich Garretson (2011) et Huang al. (2018) Trivedi (1991) Alvey Callcott and (2002) et al. Stafford (2005) Lee Phillips and Luo (2006) et al. et al. Heiser (2008) and (2008) Kinney Mize (1996) Phillips Callcott and Malik and Guptha Total appearances Sincerity ✘ ✘ 2 Excitement ✘ ✘ 2 Competence ✘ ✘ 2 Sophistication ✘ 1 Ruggedness ✘ 1 Expertise ✘ ✘ 2 Relevance ✘ 1 Nostalgia ✘ ✘ ✘ 3 Attraction ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ 4 Trustworthiness ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ 4 Liking ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ 4 Type (Celebrity vs Non- celebrity) ✘ 1 Type (customer, employee, human celebrity and created) ✘ 1 Level of animation (sound, movement) ✘ 1 Facial appearance (human vs cartoon) ✘ ✘ 2 Gender ✘ 1 Familiarity ✘ 1 Believability ✘ 1 Physical appearance ✘ 1 Humour ✘ ✘ 2 Friendliness ✘ 1 Uniqueness ✘ 1 Emotional touch ✘ 1

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2.2.3 Spokespersons in environmental advertising Human celebrity endorsers Researchers have documented the advantages of branding in the non-profit sector. Tapp (1996) and Ritchie et al. (1999) found that branding helped non-profits to develop trust among key stakeholders and educate and communicate about the cause. Hankinson (2001) reported that branding increases awareness of cause amongst the target audience and increased loyalty among donors towards the organization and the cause (Ritchie et al., 1999). However, some researchers (Salamon, 1999; Sternberg, 1998) expressed fear of over-commercialization of non-profits due to blind adoption of branding techniques used by the for-profit sector. Such over-commercialization may result in loss of the unique nature of non-profits, i.e., of values-based organizations, which characterizes non-profit organizations (Sternberg, 1998). Brockington and Henson (2015) even argued that the idea of using celebrities for environmental conservation marketing is misplaced as donors act due to personal relationships they have with the organization or the cause. Kim (2002) stated that branding can help non- profits to increase their revenue by way of garnering additional contributed income through the development of unique positioning in the minds of donors and increasing their earned income by forging commercial ventures such as product merchandising and brand licensing.

Human celebrities have been engaged by non-profit organizations to promote themselves and their causes (Anderson, 2011; Boykoff & Goodman, 2009). For instance, Hollywood actors Harrison Ford and Leonardo DiCaprio are associated with the World Wildlife Fund. Such association with celebrities results in more publicity and exposure for the cause, access to celebrities’ fans following Pringle (2004), and influences behavioural intentions (Pornpitakpan, 2004). Non-profits associate with celebrities as they can help in fund raising, increasing social cause awareness, and help access influential policy makers in the government (Samman et al., 2009; Wheeler, 2009). To measure effectiveness of celebrities in conservation marketing, Duthie et al. (2017) conducted a study and found that all ten U.K based conservation organizations they interviewed engaged celebrities in their marketing campaigns and found them valuable. The researchers also reported that celebrity endorsement is able to generate higher public willingness to engage with the cause but was not effective in generating

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higher recall of issues being communicated. This can be due to the multiple endorsements a human celebrity engages in simultaneously.

Interestingly, celebrities also gain by associating themselves with such non- profits in terms of image enhancement, publicity, and differentiation (Domínguez, 2010). Therefore, when human celebrities associate themselves with a non-profit or a cause, consumers try to comprehend the real reason or motivation for the same (Folkes, 1988). If consumers perceive that celebrities have associated with a cause just for their own image enhancement and publicity, they will react negatively as it amounts to being deceived (Forehand & Grier, 2003).

Prior research has also studied the impact of human celebrity endorsers’ attributes (i.e., race and gender) on source credibility perceptions, message evaluation, and behavioural intentions in the social marketing context. For example, Schartel Dunn and Nisbett (2020) found a significant relationship between race and gender of the endorser and perceptions of source credibility (black and male endorsers were considered more credible). Also, gender had a significant effect on behavioural intention mediated through message evaluation where the messages with male endorsers were more favourably evaluated. In a similar vein, this study proposes that spokescharacters’ attributes will influence behavioural intentions in the environmental marketing context through source credibility. This means that the effectiveness of celebrities is dependent on their race and gender, imposing choice restrictions on social marketers as they cannot modify demographic variables of an endorser.

Anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters Overall, the application of marketing and branding will see an increase in the context of non-profit organizations in the future, as this sector is becoming quite competitive (Wheeler, 2009), struggle to raise funds and try to position themselves in donors’ mind (Martín & Crespo, 2013). One of the ways these organizations can achieve differentiation is through the use of anthropomorphized spokescharacters of commercial brands in their communication. Such anthropomorphized spokescharacters are especially useful when considering the negatives associated with the use of human celebrities as discussed in the proceeding sections.

Studies focusing on the use of anthropomorphized spokescharacters in environmental campaigns are limited. Probably the first example of an

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anthropomorphized character created for an environmental cause is ‘Smokey the Bear’ (see Figure 2.3).

Figure 2.3 Example advertisements using Smokey the Bear

Created by the U.S. Forest Service through the Advertising Council and Foote, Cone and Belding in the year 1944, ‘Smokey the Bear’ was created to sensitize Americans to forest fires and their harmful impact, and soon became a nation-wide symbol of forest fire prevention (Smith, 1956). Subsequently, his merchandise became popular with children, who also urged their parents to help prevent forest fires. ‘Smokey the Bear’ also became honorary State Forester of Florida and honorary Fire Chief of the Washington D.C. Fire Department. Many schools adopted him as their official mascot (Smith, 1956). He remains popular in America to date.

In a further example, Lindström (2019) describes the use of popular cartoon spokescharacters, Yurukyara, in Japan. These spokescharacters were used by local municipalities, regional governments, and public institutions to engage locals and increase their awareness about the issue of loss of biodiversity (see Figure 2.4). He explained that despite having huge popularity, these characters failed to achieve the desired outcome, partly due to the physical characteristics and personality of the characters and partly due to the presence of local governments and big corporations which reduced the personal sense of responsibility among locals.

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Figure 2.4 Yurukyaras in Japan

Another example where anthropomorphic spokescharacters were used to foster positive changes in knowledge, attitude, and behaviours of people towards local biodiversity is Rare’s Pride campaigns. Rare is an environmental conservation organization that focuses on reducing community-based threats to biodiversity (https://rare.org/). Statistical analysis of 64 pride campaigns found that post campaign, on average, knowledge about local biodiversity issues increased 22% and attitude towards cause (loss of biodiversity) by about 15%, resulting in a 21% change in behaviour among the target audience (Hayden & Dills, 2015). Pride campaigns mostly used local species as the brand ambassadors to engage community members (see Figure 2.5).

Figure 2.5 Anthropomorphic spokescharacters in Rare’s pride campaign

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A further study shows that the creators of ‘Wasting water is weird’, a water conservation campaign, used a fictitious human character named RIP (see Figure 2.6) in their promotional videos to generate humour and discourage people from wasting water (Borden & Suggs, 2019).

Figure 2.6 RIP Character of ‘wasting water is weird’ campaign

The examples discussed in this section provide some support to the idea that anthropomorphized spokescharacters may be an effective tool to promote environmental causes such as recycling. Even though pride campaigns have used local species (anthropomorphized into relatable, energetic characters) in their campaigns to encourage protection of local biodiversity, there are not enough instances where a commercial brand spokescharacter (such as M&M spokes-candies, Michelin Man or Mr. Clean) has been utilized for the promotion of environmental campaigns. Probably using native species (by way of anthropomorphized character) to protect local biodiversity makes sense, as the target outcome is to protect the habitat itself, but for a cause like recycling or water conservation, brand spokescharacters may be effective.

Even though celebrity endorsement provides a host of benefits for advertisers, there are some potential risks involved in hiring human celebrities as endorsers. A celebrity may get involved in a controversy, lose popularity and hence the fan following. They might endorse a number of brands at the same time, which may dilute their credibility, or they may undergo an image change (Amos et al., 2008; Kaikati, 1987; Mowen & Brown, 1981). Using anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters may help advertisers escape all such pitfalls associated with a human celebrity. This is

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because brand spokescharacters are predictable, universally liked by children and adults alike, tightly controlled by marketers, associated with a single brand hence appearing more credible, and cannot get involved in controversies. Their effectiveness as endorsers is well known, as some of them have been appearing in advertisements for more than a century (e.g., Michelin Man originated in 1894, Quaker Oats Man in 1877, and Mr. Peanut in 1916).

Amos et al. (2008) found that celebrity trustworthiness has the highest positive impact, and adverse information about a celebrity has the highest negative impact on the celebrity endorsement effectiveness. This finding highlights the risk of using human celebrities and the potential advantage that anthropomorphized spokescharacters can have over them as endorsers, as they are generally trusted by people (Dotz & Morton, 1996; Garretson & Niedrich, 2004; Luo et al., 2006) and cannot get involved in negative publicity.

Human celebrities are considered attractive and are generally liked by audiences. However, their believability is not so high, probably due to the multiple endorsements they engage with at the same time (Atkin & Block, 1983; Kaikati, 1987; Mowen & Brown, 1981). As attractiveness (on which human celebrities are rated highly) does not play an important role in deciding endorser’s effectiveness in the social marketing context, and trustworthiness (on which human celebrities are rated low) is an important dimension of an endorser in the social marketing context (Martín & Crespo, 2013; Wheeler, 2009), environmental marketers will be better off using anthropomorphized brand characters instead of human celebrities, as they are generally considered trustworthy (Dotz & Morton, 1996; Garretson & Niedrich, 2004).

Given these drawbacks of human celebrities and benefits of using anthropomorphized spokescharacters as endorsers, this study posits that using anthropomorphized spokescharacters can result in better communication effectiveness for environmental organizations.

A further consideration for successful endorsement is a matchup between the celebrity and target audience (Bergkvist & Zhou, 2016; Erdogan et al., 2001). For example, children are future consumers, so environmentalists must try to develop positive attitudes in them towards the natural environment early in their life. For this, using anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters in recycling messages may be a good strategy to influence children, as these characters have been widely used by

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commercial marketers successfully for marketing children-focused products (Kyung et al., 2010). Also, children can persuade their parents to adopt green behaviour; in a similar way they urged their parents to prevent forest fires when ‘Smokey the Bear’ urged them to do so (Smith, 1956). Neeley and Schumann (2004) reported that sometimes, brand spokescharacters attract children towards unhealthy foods or harmful adult products such as cigarettes, as they lack cognitive skills to decide what is good or bad for them. Building on this argument, the presence of anthropomorphized spokescharacters in a recycling message may similarly entice children to practice recycling more.

The purposes of any brand communication are creating brand awareness, fostering positive brand attitude, and finally generating purchase intention for the brand (Rossiter & Percy, 1987). In terms of using anthropomorphized spokescharacters to promote environmental causes such as recycling, it can be anticipated that these spokescharacters may be an effective communication tool to positively affect attitudes towards the cause, and intentions to engage with the cause.

Brand spokescharacters when used in environmental communication will be considered as celebrity endorsers as per the classification by Callcott and Lee (1995). Bergkvist and Zhou (2016) defined celebrity endorsement as “an agreement between an individual who enjoys public recognition (a celebrity) and an entity (e.g., a brand) to use the celebrity for the purpose of promoting the entity.” For the purpose of this study, the celebrity will be an anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter, such as Tony the Tiger, Michelin Man, M&M characters, etc. and the entity is an environmental cause (i.e., recycling). Source effectiveness dimensions such as trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness are used to evaluate celebrity endorsement effectiveness. The next sections describe source appeal as a new source effectiveness dimension for anthropomorphic spokescharacters along with three existing dimensions.

2.3 SOURCE APPEAL OF ANTHROPOMORPHIZED BRAND SPOKESCHARACTERS

2.3.1 Background According to the Cambridge dictionary, appeal is defined as “the quality in someone or something that makes him, her or it, attractive or interesting”. Even though anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters have been addressed as appealing

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by different researchers for the last thirty years (see Table 2.3), to the best of the researcher’s knowledge, no study has attempted to explore the factors of anthropomorphized spokescharacters’ appeal to date.

Table 2.3 Discussion of spokescharacter’s appeal in brand spokescharacter literature

Research study Exemplary quotes

Callcott and Lee (1994, ‘The prevalence of characters during adult programming p. 8) provides more support for the idea that spokes-characters are appealing to adult audiences, male as well as female.’ Callcott and Lee (1995, ‘Although undoubtedly sensing their appeal, the creators p. 145) of the Michelin Man, Tony the Tiger, and the California Raisins …’ Callcott and Phillips ‘Neotenous shapes, relevant character props, and a (1996, p. 77) contemporary appearance all contribute to the visual appeal of spokes-characters.’ Luo et al. (2006, p. ‘Moreover, the appearance and behaviour of synthetic 113) characters is controllable. Their appearance can be subtly changed to appeal to contemporary audiences...’ Stafford et al. (2002, p. ‘The Road Runner is cute and appealing, and his 19) commonly known and appreciated qualities make him an ideal character for a sports car ad.’

However, past studies have attempted to unpack the human celebrity appeal. As such, to find why human celebrities are appealing to their fans, Stever (1991) conducted multiple studies (i.e., qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys) to develop and test a celebrity appeal questionnaire with fans of Michael Jackson and other entertainment celebrities such as Janet Jackson, Madonna, Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen and identified four dimensions that constituted human celebrity appeal. These include hero/role model, sex appeal, mystique and talent. Lunardo et al. (2015) attempted to find antecedents of human celebrity appeal by using personality trait dimensions suggested by Aaker (1997). They highlighted that even though there is a huge literature available on celebrity endorsement effectiveness, very few studies have investigated the factors that influence a human celebrity’s appeal. They empirically found that celebrities’ appeal is positively influenced by sophistication, sincerity, competence, and excitement and negatively influenced by perceived rudeness, which was used in place of ruggedness dimension.

A recent attempt to identify factors that make human celebrities appealing is made by Wohlfeil et al. (2019). Following an autoethnographic approach, the

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researchers drew conclusions based on the narratives of the lead author’s emotional relationship with his favourite film star and other stars from film and music arenas. Accordingly, data analysis revealed the four constituents of a celebrity’s appeal as ‘the performer’, ‘the private person’, ‘the tangible possession’ and ‘the social link’. ‘Performer’ dimension, which was considered the strongest contributor to celebrity appeal, refers to the public image of the celebrity. Here, consumers find the celebrity appealing due to his/her performance in the associated field and the persona surrounding him/her.

The ‘private person’ dimension refers to the knowledge or perception about a celebrity as a real human being considering their personal life, family members, association with charity etc. i.e., the kind of person he/she is when not performing in his/her work arena. It is noteworthy that due to social media, consumers are now widely aware of private lives of their favourite celebrities, which contribute to their appeal. ‘The tangible possession’ refers to the ways in which a celebrity may become accessible and tangible to the consumer through products such as DVDs, posters, celebrity branded t-shirts, books, magazines etc. The more such ways are, the more tangible a celebrity appears to the consumers, which will result in more appeal. Finally, ‘social link’ refers to the ability of a celebrity to act as a common connection through which people form social bonds with other fans or like-minded individuals. The higher the ability of a celebrity to act as a social link, the higher will be the appeal.

Taking cues from the findings of this study, anthropomorphized spokescharacters offer a lot of product merchandising opportunity (i.e., tangible possession) such as in the case of Mickey Mouse or Hello Kitty (Walker, 2008). They are liked by consumers of all ages and gender (Phillips et al., 2019) and hence may act as a strong social link as well. Therefore, anthropomorphized characters can be appealing spokespersons for environmental causes. They may act as a unifying force, bringing together people from different sections of society towards environmentalism.

But why is understanding celebrity appeal important? Stever (1991) used the question, ‘Why do I like a particular celebrity?’ to establish four dimensions of human celebrity appeal. That is, understanding what constitutes celebrity’s appeal will help to understand why a celebrity is being liked by the audience, which results in the formation of a parasocial relationship, which is a one-sided intimate relationship perceived by fans with their favourite celebrities (Hartmann & Goldhoorn, 2011).

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Parasocial relationships with celebrities result in consumers identifying with the celebrities, which then motivates fans to show greater agreement with their favourite celebrities’ beliefs and recommendations (Wen, 2017). So, if a celebrity is more appealing to his/her fans, the parasocial relationship formed will be much stronger, which would make the celebrity a better endorser.

Even though all celebrities generally are considered appealing, the level of appeal varies considerably across different celebrities, with some considered highly appealing and others somewhat less. Hence understanding what makes celebrity appealing is imperative (Lunardo et al., 2015). In this regard, Wohlfeil et al. (2019, p. 2026) raised the valid questions, ‘Why do consumers devote so much time, money and emotive energy to famous people that they will probably never meet in person and who will probably never know that they exist? What exactly about celebrities is it that resonates so deeply with consumers? And why are they often interested in some celebrities but feel indifferent to others?’.

Lunardo et al. (2015), in their study to find factors that made up celebrity appeal, highlighted that celebrities need to understand why they are appealing as they launch their own branded products in the market and the success of such products depend on their appeal among the fans. So, they focused on the benefits of understanding constituents of appeal to celebrities themselves. In a similar vein, understanding what constitutes an anthropomorphic spokescharacter’s appeal may inform environmental marketers to select existing or create highly appealing spokescharacters with whom consumers may form stronger parasocial relationships, resulting in higher endorsement effectiveness in environmental communication.

In the environmental conservation field, some scholars have studied factors that influence the species’ appeal, an indicator which measures the suitability of a particular species to be used in environmental conservation campaigns (Macdonald et al., 2017; Veríssimo et al., 2009). For instance, Macdonald et al. (2015) conducted an online survey with 1500 participants drawn from five nations (Australia, India, South Africa, UK, and the USA) and found that species with large body size, forward facing eyes, high threat level and posing a potential threat to humans were rated more appealing, such as puma, leopard, Asian elephant, tiger, etc. Such appeal scores of different species informs the conservationists’ decision to use appropriate species in conservation campaigns to garner large-scale support from the general public. Along

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similar lines, this study is proposing that an anthropomorphized spokescharacter’s appeal score can guide environmental organizations when selecting anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters to engage a maximum number of stakeholders.

In another study, Callcott and Phillips (1996) conducted qualitative interviews with consumers to explore what makes spokescharacters likable by showing them spokescharacter advertisements. One of the questions they asked was, “what is it about this character’s appearance that you find appealing?” Physical characteristics such as neotenous shapes, relevant character props and contemporary appearance were reasons mentioned by participants as contributing to the visual appeal of the shown spokescharacters in their study. They also found that all participants mentioned the word ‘cute’ for spokescharacters such as Pillsbury Doughboy, RCA puppy, and Scrubbing Bubbles. Lawrence (1986) also suggested that Kindchenschema (i.e., a baby-like appearance) and cuteness of cartoon characters make them appealing.

Participants in the study by Callcott and Phillips (1996) also agreed that the use of brand spokescharacters makes an advertisement humorous, possibly due to participants associating humour with comics and cartoons since their childhood. They further stated that humour associated with spokescharacters can be engendered due to different reasons such as wit or silly behaviour of the character, or even the mere presence of an animation can makes the character appear humorous. A story around a character can also result in humour, as in a comic narrative.

Furthermore, nostalgic feelings are associated with brand spokescharacters as some of them have been in existence for generations. Seeing brands and their associated spokescharacters from one’s childhood can prime nostalgic feelings among consumers (Garretson & Niedrich, 2004; Langer, 1997; Wildschut et al., 2006). In fact, cuteness and nostalgic feelings engendered by anthropomorphized characters such as Hello Kitty and Mickey Mouse are considered key factors for their phenomenal success and everlasting appeal (Gould, 1979; Hosany et al., 2013; Lawrence, 1986).

Human celebrities are generally considered likable (Atkin & Block, 1983) and liking towards a source can lead to its overall positive evaluation due to the Halo Effect (Lachman & Bass, 1985). Callcott and Alvey (1991) in their study found the brand spokescharacters as generally likable. Therefore, liking may also be a factor resulting in celebrity endorser’s appeal.

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As personality traits of human celebrities and appearance of animal species lead to their appeal, it can be assumed that the same dimensions (i.e., personality and appearance) may lead to an anthropomorphized spokescharacter’s appeal. Since these brand spokescharacters have been described as cute, likable, and humorous and can be considered as objects of nostalgia, it is proposed that these attributes will constitute the spokescharacters’ appeal. Considering these arguments, this study puts forward the following hypothesis.

H1: The appeal of brand spokescharacter will consists of its liking, cuteness, humour, and nostalgia.

Social Marketing in general and environmental communication in particular aims to change consumers’ attitudes and intentions, resulting in more sustainable consumption and behaviours. Fear and guilt appeals have been prominently used in social marketing and environmental communication, which may generate defensive reactions such as denial and hopelessness from consumers, indicating that it may work only for those having prior positive attitude towards advertised behaviour (Jäger & Eisend, 2013; Witte & Allen, 2000).

It is interesting to note that recent research work has shown positive outcomes of using cuteness, humour, and nostalgic appeals in social and environmental communication. This further justifies the proposition of this study that anthropomorphized spokescharacters can be effective endorsers in environmental communication, as their presence will amount to using cuteness, humour, and nostalgic appeals together. The following sections review the positive outcomes of applying cuteness, humour, and nostalgic appeals in social and environmental marketing, which suggest that using anthropomorphized spokescharacters in social and environmental communication can achieve similar outcomes.

2.3.2 Cuteness appeals Cuteness is defined as being attractive in an adorable or endearing way (Hellen & Sääksjärvi, 2013). Everyday usage of the word ‘cute’ or ‘cuteness’ has different associations and reflects myriad meanings such as pleasant, attractive, pretty and lovable, or represents ‘behaviours that are funny and humorous’. However, academic research has defined two facets of cuteness; Kindchenschema and whimsicality (Wang et al., 2017). Kindchenschema cuteness is related to the appearance of newborns

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characterised by a big, round head, large eyes, rounded cheeks and chubby body, and assessed by the degree to which a stimulus is baby-like in appearance (Lorenz, 1943). For example, an anthropomorphized character such as Mickey Mouse or Hello Kitty can be considered as possessing Kindchenschema cuteness. The other type of cuteness, whimsicality, is created by marketers and relates to whimsical fun, playfulness, and capricious humour (Nenkov & Scott, 2014).

Cuteness is generally associated with cartoon characters and children’s toys such as dolls or teddy bears. Cuteness has also been linked with the success of some of the iconic anthropomorphized characters such as Mickey Mouse. Gould (1979) in his article described how Mickey Mouse went through an appearance transformation since his creation and acquired Kindchenschema features such as large head size, large eyes, shorter and thicker nose, as he went through an image makeover from being mischievous to becoming his present lovable avatar of a trustworthy and optimistic character. In the process, he became cuter, which probably explains the reason for his universal, everlasting appeal (Finch, 1983). Lawrence (1986) also described that the physical appearance of Mickey Mouse has been like baby schema, referring to the child-like features that make him cute and appealing. She also added that toy manufacturers have been using such baby schema in designing cute dolls and toy animals which beget caretaking behaviour in children and make such toys attractive and appealing.

Another reason as to why successful anthropomorphized characters have been designed with baby schema is to satisfy the human desire to defy imminent death. By creating ever-youthful characters who just do not grow old and by identifying with them, humans fulfil their desire of retaining a juvenile state (Lawrence, 1986). Hosany et al. (2013) described how cuteness associated with Hello Kitty is one of the main reasons contributing to her likability and success. Dubbed as cute, Hello Kitty became a global icon and sold more than 50,000 products in more than sixty countries (Walker, 2008).

However, the question of whether it is reasonable to believe that cuteness, primed by brand spokescharacters, can influence consumers’ environmental behaviours remains unexplored. Public policy makers and social marketers mostly use coercive appeals in their communication, which are either frightening (e.g., large-scale species extinction, harmful effects of pollution on health) or enticing through monetary

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rewards, to instil pro-environmental behaviours (Griskevicius et al., 2012; Moller et al., 2006). However, such appeals are hypothesized to be ineffective to produce long- term behaviour change (Geller, 2002). An alternate strategy could be to use cute appeals in environmental messages. Organizations such as the World-Wide Fund for Nature use cute images in their advertising. Cuteness has been successfully used for commercial gains (e.g., Hello Kitty, Mickey Mouse) and may prove to be equally effective in convincing consumers to adopt sustainable behaviours (Wang et al., 2017).

Humans pay special attention to objects that are considered significant for their well-being, such as towards threatening stimuli (e.g., snakes) that could possibly harm them (Öhman & Mineka, 2003). Generally, stimuli that are considered highly relevant, irrespective of their valence, are processed and analysed carefully and in depth. This has an evolutionary basis since the human brain has become accustomed to pay special attention to biologically highly significant stimuli. One such stimuli is new-born babies, which Lorenz (1943) suggested possesses Kindchenschema (i.e., baby schema) cuteness across species. Due to the helplessness of the infants and to ensure reproductive success, the human brain has evolved to react with positive emotions and caretaking behaviour on sighting newborns. Therefore, sighting Kindchenschema cuteness generates positive emotions and nurturing behaviours in human beings Brosch et al. (2007).

Sustainable behaviours by nature are prosocial, as they not only result in individual but collective benefit (Batson, 2009). Prosocial behaviour can be considered an extension of the nurturing instinct, as when people act in a prosocial way, they are displaying caring behaviour. So, it can be argued that exposure to Kindchenschema cute stimuli may trigger prosocial behaviour such as pro-environmental behaviour in people (Wang et al., 2017). Humans are social beings, hence nurturing responses triggered by Kindchenschema cuteness may not be limited towards their own family members or near ones but may extend to others in general such as community members (Shaver et al., 2010). Glocker et al. (2009) described that activation of ventral striatum (i.e., a brain region associated with general altruistic behaviours) happened when participants were exposed to cute infant images, further supporting the link between Kindchenschema cuteness and prosocial behaviours. Wang et al. (2017) empirically established that exposure to Kindchenschema cuteness in a recycling appeal positively influenced recycling intentions of participants, giving credence to the hypothesis of

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this research that the presence of cute anthropomorphized spokescharacters in recycling messages can enhance recycling intentions.

Using pictures of human, cat and dog adult and infant, Brosch et al. (2007) empirically found that exposure to Kindchenschema cuteness primed through the use of infant pictures resulted in capturing participants’ attention and quicker response time towards the stimuli, particularly when exposed to human infants. Their findings corroborated with those of another study, which reported higher attention given to images of babies as compared to those of adults (Leibenluft et al., 2004). Glocker et al. (2009) empirically tested the effects of Kindchenschema (i.e., baby schema) on cuteness ratings and caretaking intentions among adult participants by using infant pictures with varying degrees of Kindchenschema features. Here, undergraduate students were exposed to a set of infant pictures which were high, low (i.e., manipulated pictures) or neutral (i.e., unmanipulated pictures) on baby schema and were asked to rate the cuteness and caretaking intention for each infant on a five-point scale. It was found that infants with high baby schema were perceived as significantly cuter and induced higher caretaking intentions among participants than under unmanipulated or low baby schema conditions.

Cute infants are also perceived to be more likable, friendly, and competent as compared to less cute infants (Casey & Ritter, 1996; Karraker & Stern, 1990; Ritter et al., 1991) and are looked at longer (Hildebrandt & Fitzgerald, 1979). One study even found that adults having faces with Kindchenschema (i.e., baby schema) features elicited higher helping behaviour as compared to those who lacked baby schema (Keating et al., 2003). These findings suggest that anthropomorphized spokescharacters with Kindchenschema cuteness, when used in recycling messages, may be perceived as likable, friendly and elicit a higher favourable response from audience if such appeal solicits help (e.g., donating for a cause).

The other type of cuteness, whimsicality, has been shown to engender feelings of fun and playfulness, which result in consumers tending to self-reward themselves by way of indulgent consumption. Nenkov and Scott (2014) conducted a series of experiments using different products like whimsically cute food utensils and office supplies among others, to establish the link between exposure to whimsically cute stimuli and indulgent consumption via mental priming of fun. They showed that participants scooped more ice-cream using a whimsically cute scoop as against a

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normal one and were more likely to use a whimsically cute stapler as opposed to normal one for fun activities. It was further shown that exposure to whimsically cute products primed mental representations of fun, leading to self-rewards by way of indulgent behaviour. They also suggested that using whimsically cute brand spokescharacters may be advantageous for companies, as consumers may indulge more in their product consumption.

Based on the findings of Nenkov and Scott (2014), it can be reasoned that the presence of a whimsically cute spokescharacter in a recycling message may result in mental priming of playfulness and fun. Hence, consumers (especially children) might perceive recycling as a fun activity and indulge more in it. Nenkov and Scott (2014) have used low-involvement products in their research study to establish connection between exposure to whimsically cute stimuli and indulgent consumption. Hence, this research will validate their findings by extending to a different class of product, i.e., a social cause more specifically recycling.

Given the positive association of cuteness with source liking, altruism, recycling intention, and ability to generate message attention and positive emotions, environmental marketers must explore associations with anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters that possess both Kindchenschema and whimsicality cuteness. Another option is designing new spokescharacters with both types of cuteness (e.g., Kindchenschema cuteness can be infused by giving baby-like physical appearance to the character and whimsicality by giving playful, humorous, and fun personality to the character) for promoting environmental causes. Further, Wang et al. (2017) stated that there has been no research done to explore the influence of using cuteness in social messages, hence it is a relatively new research area. Hence this study will add to this emerging research area.

2.3.3 Humour appeals Humorous messages embed appeals that use amusement to generate positive affect and attract audience’s attention (Lee & Ferguson, 2002). Use of humour in advertising is quite prevalent (Beard, 2005) and around 70% of persuasive advertisements aired during the Super Bowl used some form of humour (Gulas et al., 2010). The immediate effect of seeing humour in advertising may be described by a generic affective response known as mirth. Such responses include happiness, fun or pleasure, which further may engender positive feelings, thoughts, attitudes, or actions

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(Gulas & Weinberger, 2006). Humour can enhance attention towards the message, release tensions, increase liking, and source attraction (Meyer, 2000). Humour can also generate a good mood that results in positive emotions and reduction in counterarguments to message claims (Walter et al., 2018). It has also been linked to perceived source credibility, such that audiences associate higher perceived credibility to a humorous source (Gruner, 2000).

In the meta-analysis of studies related to effects of humour on advertising and brand outcomes, Eisend (2009) reported that humour was consistently found to generate message attention and awareness, enhance source liking, and advertisement attitude, and elevate positive cognitions while reducing negative ones. Regarding product category types, it was found that both related and unrelated humour positively influences brand attitude in the case of hedonic products, but only related humour is effective in the case of high risk/involvement functional goods such as white goods. However, the use of humour in environmental messages has not been researched adequately and this research will add to the limited literature available in this area.

Humour has the ability to generate incongruency and hence surprise in the message, especially if it is used in environmental messages, which generally use fear or guilt appeals. Berger and Milkman (2012) reported that participants were more likely to share content online, which is perceived to be more surprising. Another study found that humorous messages related to avoiding unplanned pregnancy, which is a social issue, resulted in greater sharing of the message with friends (Campo et al., 2013). Hence, recycling message with presence of humorous spokescharacters may have higher chances of being shared on social media, thus influencing behaviours of others as well.

Classical conditioning is also used to explain the effect of humour on brand attitude. The unconditional stimulus is the humour element used in the ad (such as a brand spokescharacter) which generates positive affect towards it (unconditioned reaction). The conditioned stimulus becomes the brand and the associated positive feeling towards it is the conditioned reaction (Priluck & Till, 2004). Similarly, it can be hypothesized that positive affect towards humorous spokescharacters will get transferred to an environmental cause such as recycling.

Humour appeals in environmental marketing can be a good alternate strategy as opposed to fear and guilt appeals to persuade consumers. Fear appeals are negative

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valence appeals, which highlight the harmful consequence of not adopting the advertised recommendations or behaviours. Fear appeals may generate two types of competing audience responses, self-protective (i.e., encouraging adoption of advertised behaviour) or defensive reaction (i.e., avoidance or denial due to perceived restriction to freedom of choice) (Witte & Allen, 2000). Fear appeals may be considered as a threat to an individual’s freedom of choice like the freedom to smoke, drive fast, or take long showers. As a consequence of defensive reaction, individuals display reactance, a tendency to act the opposite of advertised behaviour to restore their freedom of choice. Offering a more theoretical explanation, the theory of psychological reactance (Brehm, 1966, 1972) states that people want to be in control over their decisions, actions, and determination of personal norms and may resist social norms or pressures that threaten their behavioural freedom.

There are higher chances of counterarguments when an individual’s prior attitude is not favourable towards the advertised behaviour (e.g., water conservation or recycling). Humour can persuade audiences by distracting them from forming counterarguments (Speck, 1991). Humorous ads appear less intrusive (Edwards et al., 2002) and more welcoming and therefore will be less resisted in the case of social marketing, especially by those who hold a negative attitude towards the advertised behaviour. Humour can convey the threat information (e.g., climate change, health ill- effects of air pollution) in a positive and playful way, thereby reducing the unpleasantness and threat level of the message. This makes the message more approachable (Yoon & Tinkham, 2013).

Researchers have studied the impact of using humour appeals in social and environmental marketing. McKenzie-Mohr et al. (2012) stated that the common strategies used by social marketing campaigns to influence behaviours are prompts (reminders), social norms, social diffusion, promotion, rewards, punishment and convenience. Studies have focused on enhancing understanding as to why these strategies work, however, why humour is used by social marketers has not been researched in detail (Borden & Suggs, 2019; Jäger & Eisend, 2013), which is surprising given that humour has been extensively researched in classical marketing.

Research focusing on the use of humour in environmental communications has found positive effects on message perception (Skurka et al., 2018) and that it generates higher issue involvement, especially for less engaged consumers (Anderson & Becker,

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2018). On the other hand, some research studies have reported the opposite, presenting that the use of humour distracts people and reduces credibility of the serious issues (Hansmann et al., 2009; Pinto & Riesch, 2017). These inconsistent findings suggest that the effectiveness of humour in environmental communication is not well established. Therefore, the present study explores the effectiveness of humour using brand spokescharacters in recycling messages.

Kaltenbacher and Drews (2020) reviewed 28 empirical studies published in refereed journals that focused on the application of humour in climate change communication and concluded that the use of humour in environmental communication is a relatively new phenomenon. They found that eight studies focused on raising climate change awareness and all of them found positive effects of using humour. Around two-third of the studies that focused on changing perceptions about climate change issues (i.e., five out of seven) found positive results of using humour. When it comes to behavioural intentions and actual behaviour changes, the influence of humour is limited, as only half of the studies (i.e., three out of six) showed positive outcomes, two showed no effect and one study even showed negative effects of using humour. These findings are in sync with the outcome of humour in commercial marketing (see Eisend (2009)) wherein humour can influence attitudes but not behaviours. However, Kaltenbacher and Drews (2020) did not report the use of anthropomorphized spokescharacters by the studies as a way to prime humour in environmental communication. They also reported that no previous research has studied the role of humorous messengers in environmental communication in influencing attitudes and behaviours. Therefore, this research study attempts to address this gap by studying the role of brand spokescharacters as a messenger in recycling messages.

Borden and Suggs (2019) investigated the use of humour in fifteen social marketing campaigns focused on water conservation behaviour. They analysed three of them in detail by interviewing campaign planners to understand how and why humour was used in these campaigns and whether it was effective in achieving behaviour changes. These three campaigns (i.e., ‘Wasting water is weird’, ‘Use only what you need’, and ‘Project: Drop-a-Brick’) were selected as they reported successful application of humour to drive behaviour change among the target audience. For example, Wasting Water Is Weird campaign (SheltonGrp., 2017) aimed at making

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Americans understand the importance of water conservation. This campaign utilized a fictitious spokesperson named RIP (see Figure 2.6), by creating a humorous situation to make people realize that wasting water is a bad practice. Afterwards, 29% of the respondents who watched the campaign reported changing their water usage habit and campaign planners attributed the success of the campaign to the use of humour.

The second campaign, Use Only What You Need, targeted homeowners in Denver, USA, to reduce the amount of water used for lawns. The campaign anthropomorphized grass into dumb humans to give the message that grass is unintelligent and will not notice if watered less (i.e., using a humorous strategy). Against a targeted water usage reduction of 22% over a period of ten years, the campaign achieved a 21% reduction in the first year itself and continued successfully for ten years, achieving an 89% awareness level. Similar success was reported by campaign managers of the third campaign, Project: Drop a brick, which deployed simple humour to reduce water usage for the flush in toilets. Overall, the researchers reported that humour increased campaign recall and word-of-mouth publicity, succeeded in grabbing an audience’s attention, made advertised behaviour fun and hence less troubling, and created a positive affect towards the sponsoring organization.

Jäger and Eisend (2013) empirically showed that participants with prior unfavourable attitudes towards advertised behaviour like drunk driving and over- speeding showed a higher intention to comply with behaviour when exposed to a humorous ad as opposed to one with fear appeal. It can be argued then that consumers with unfavourable attitudes towards, for example, recycling (i.e., those who feel that recycling is not worth it, cumbersome, or useless) may be convinced to recycle if they are exposed to humorous environmental messages due to the presence of brand spokescharacters.

In another study, Nabi (2016) argued that sometimes, the use of fear appeals to encourage self-examinations to detect diseases such as cancers, are not effective, as fear of knowing the consequences (i.e., anxiety associated with test result) of self-exam may inhibit people from acting. Anxiety shifts the focus away from the message appeal to the threat-inducing stimulus, thereby reducing the effectiveness of the message. Humour can be deployed to make behaviour appear less scary, (i.e., change perception about the behaviour itself) by disrupting the emergence of anxiety associated with the self-exam. According to circumplex model of emotions, to interrupt a particular

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emotional state, invoking a totally unrelated emotional state, is the best strategy. In this model, joy is totally unrelated to fear/anxiety, hence invoking joy through the use of humour can result in higher message persuasiveness by decreasing anxiety.

Nabi (2016) empirically showed that exposure to humorous messages related to self-examination for breast cancer or testicular cancer resulted in higher message processing (i.e., attention), reduction in anxiety associated with self-exam, which further resulted in higher positive attitude, intention towards self-exam, and self- reported behaviour (i.e., conduction of self-exam). Similarly, some consumers have anxiety related to recycling as it is quite time consuming, cumbersome, and difficult to do. The findings of this study by Nabi (2016) suggest that the use of humour may mitigate such anxiety and enhance behavioural intentions.

In a similar context, Hansmann et al. (2009) conducted a survey and field experiment to find the effectiveness of a humorous slogan (vs. a factual slogan) encouraging Swiss people to recycle used batteries. In the survey, they asked respondents to rate ten slogans varied on different characteristics including humour, in terms of their overall impression and perceived effectiveness in terms of motivating consumers to recycle used batteries. Even though the humorous slogan was rated highest (the factual was rated second worst) on both overall impression and perceived effectiveness, it was found that factual slogans that are easily comprehensible and informative resulted in significantly higher recycling of batteries as compared to humorous slogans and control conditions. One reason stated by the researchers for this finding was the prescriptive tone of the humorous slogan (i.e., ‘Get one-bring one (battery recycling)’; whereas ‘Batteries are separately collected’ was the factual one), which was perceived as instructing by the recipients. However, such directiveness may sometime lead consumers to not comply with the message, according to Reactance Theory (Brehm, 1966, 1972). This finding also suggests the importance of conducting field experiments to verify the effectiveness of humorous environmental communication.

Product or issue involvement is an important moderator of effects of humour on persuasion, such that under the condition of low involvement, i.e., less perceived relevancy and importance of the issue, humour appeals to work better as consumers are less motivated for deeper information processing (Chung & Zhao, 2011; Limbu et al., 2012). Low involved consumers are less motivated to process the information

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cognitively, and look for heuristics cues such as humour, celebrities, or cartoon characters to aid them in message processing (Cacioppo & Petty, 1984). Yoon and Tinkham (2013) conducted a study with undergraduate students, using humour in an environmental message focusing on the issue of deforestation and centred on threat appeal (i.e., deforestation leads to climate change). It was found that for less involved participants, exposure to a humorous ad (as against a non-humorous one) generated a higher attitude towards behaviour (i.e., saying no to disposable cups or paper plates), but no influence on behavioural intentions was reported.

To summarize, it is evident that since humour increases message attention and liking, source liking and credibility, generates positive affect, reduces counterarguing towards message claims and enhances chances of message sharing online, environmental marketers might explore the use of humorous anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters in recycling messages, especially to engage people who are less involved with recycling.

2.3.4 Nostalgia appeals Before the late twentieth century, nostalgia was associated with negative connotations such as mental disease, depression, homesickness, anxiety, and insomnia (Sedikides et al., 2008). However, Davis (1979) in his study found that participant students associated nostalgia with words like warmth, old times, childhood, and yearning more frequently than to homesickness. Davis (1979) defined nostalgia as a “positively toned evocation of a lived past” and Holbrook (1993) summarized nostalgia as a desire for the past or a liking for possessions and activities of days gone by. As such, the Holbrook and Schindler (1991) definition that nostalgia is “a preference (general liking, positive attitude, or favourable affect) towards objects (people, places, or things) that were more common (popular, fashionable, or widely circulated) when one was younger (in early adulthood, in adolescence, in childhood, or even before birth)” provides a comprehensive understanding of the concept.

As evident from the above definitions of nostalgia, objects from the past such as from one’s childhood may engender nostalgic feelings; one such object can be brand spokescharacters that appeared in advertising during one’s childhood. Wildschut et al. (2006) conducted a series of studies to investigate different facets of nostalgia such as content, triggers, and outcomes. They found that primary objects of nostalgia are persons, momentous events such as birthdays, marriage, anniversary, animals,

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tangibles such as old clothes, toys etc., and that major nostalgia triggers are negative affect, social interactions, and sensory inputs such as smell or music. These findings suggest that sighting (i.e., a type of sensory input) a brand spokescharacter from one’s childhood may trigger nostalgic feelings.

Langer (1997) suggested that across different age groups, nostalgia results in developing a strong connection between brand and consumers. The brands and the associated brand spokescharacters that consumers grew up with, and those used by their parents, formed an inseparable part of their life, particularly those related to food and beverage categories, as the smells and tastes associated with these brands prime the memories of childhood. Lawrence (1986) asserted that Mickey Mouse ignited the feelings of nostalgia in people who visit Disney theme parks to relive their childhood. Hosany et al. (2013) also found that feelings of nostalgia were associated with Hello Kitty. Women who grew up playing with Hello Kitty, wanted to continue their association with their childhood friend as it helped them to retreat to their childhood days. Therefore, products such as toasters, furniture and vacuum cleaners were launched with the Hello Kitty brand to satisfy consumer’s nostalgic feelings/cravings.

Brands have been using nostalgia in their promotional campaigns, reintroducing slogans, and spokescharacters from the past to generate positive affect in consumers by connecting them to their past (Garretson & Niedrich, 2004). The findings of an empirical study conducted by Garretson and Niedrich (2004) suggest that perceived spokescharacter’s expertise and nostalgia feeling are significant predictors of spokescharacter trust, which in turn generates favourable brand attitude. The feeling of nostalgia associated with spokescharacters, along with other factors such as familiarity and predictability, make the brand spokescharacters trustworthy (Callcott & Alvey, 1991). Therefore, it can be hypothesized that a brand spokescharacter that generates feelings of nostalgia, may generate positive attitude towards recycling when used in recycling messages, mediated through trust towards the character.

Recently, Zhang et al. (2020) empirically showed the influence of nostalgia on recycling intentions and actual behaviour. By priming nostalgic feelings in individuals using nostalgic background music, paper cups with nostalgic images, and recalling a nostalgic event, they showed across four different studies that nostalgia can enhance actual recycling behaviour and recycling intentions for products such as raffle tickets, used paper, paper cups, and bottles, computer equipment, used clothes etc. The

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researchers in this study used background music, nostalgic images, and recall of past event to prime nostalgia feelings. This study proposes to use brand spokescharacters.

Zhou et al. (2008) reported that nostalgic feelings led social connectedness among Chinese participants comprising university and high school students and factory workers. Further, it has been shown that social connectedness enhances willingness to help unknown distressed others and actual helping behaviour through the generation of other-oriented empathy (Mikulincer et al., 2005). Wildschut et al. (2006) reported that participants listed significantly more desirable outcomes (as against undesirable outcomes) of nostalgia. Among desirable outcomes, the three most prominent ones were positive affect, social bonds, and self-regard. One desirable outcome of priming of social bonding due to nostalgia is increased altruistic behaviour (Mikulincer et al., 2005). Hence, it can be argued that a feeling of nostalgia engendered on seeing a brand spokescharacter from one’s childhood may enhance pro- environmental behaviour, which is a form of altruistic behaviour (Green & Peloza, 2014; Kim & Stepchenkova, 2020).

Nostalgia also begets helpful behaviour through positive affect. Wildschut et al. (2006) found that participants who were asked to recall a nostalgic life event (vs an ordinary life event) reported more positive emotions. Research also reports that such positive affective states enhance willingness to help others (Baron, 1997; Forgas & George, 2001; Isen, 1987; Isen & Levin, 1972). To study effects of nostalgia on altruistic behaviour, Zhou et al. (2012) conducted a number of studies with Chinese as well as international university students and empirically found that the feeling of nostalgia enhanced charitable intentions and behaviours among participants (i.e., willingness to volunteer for NGO and monetary donation amount). In one of their studies, empathy towards earthquake victims shown under nostalgic conditions fully mediated the effects of nostalgia on donation intentions. Zhou et al. (2012) suggested a future research area in which nostalgia may be used in environmental conservation appeals. Therefore, the present research is answering their call by exploring the use of brand spokescharacters in recycling messages to prime nostalgic feelings, which can engender empathy towards species affected by environmental degradation depicted in the appeal and generate a higher intention to act pro-environmentally.

Sargeant et al. (2006) identified familial utility (i.e., motivation to support a charity that might benefit family members, friends, or others similar to them in future)

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and emotional utility (i.e., motivation to support a charity for emotional benefits like feeling good) as non-economic intrinsic factors that influence propensity to donate to charity. Merchant et al. (2011) empirically showed that the feeling of nostalgia predicted donation intentions, mediated through familial and emotional utility. As nostalgia primes people’s mind with memories of close others, recycling messages with brand spokescharacters as endorsers may result in higher intention to act due to familial utility (i.e., benefits of pro-environmental act accruing to their children, family, and close others) and emotional utility (i.e., feeling good due to altruism).

Even though nostalgia is about one’s past, surprisingly it has the ability to make one think about future too (e.g., when I look at a family photo, I imagine about all the good times to come in future) and take proactive actions(Sedikides & Wildschut, 2016). This future orientation primed by nostalgia due to the presence of brand spokescharacters in recycling messages may motivate people to act pro- environmentally (White et al., 2019). In a series of experiments, Cheung et al. (2013) empirically showed that nostalgia led to enhanced levels of optimism, mediated through social connectedness and self-esteem, and another study found that optimism motivates people to adopt and maintain pro-environmental behaviour over time (Peter & Honea, 2012).

Recently, Sheehan (2020) explored the influence of nostalgia primed by anthropomorphized characters (i.e., Hello Kitty and Ms. Piggy) on their perceived attractiveness, trustworthiness, and expertise in a luxury marketing context and ultimately on their fit to endorse luxury products and purchase intentions. Source credibility dimensions have been found to be important antecedents to perception of fit in a luxury branding context (Qian & Park, 2018), further leading to positive brand perceptions. Using participants recruited through the online platform Mechanical Turk, and real advertisements, Sheehan (2020) found that both characters were considered moderately credible, as well as moderately fit to endorse luxury brands even though consumers knew that they did not use handbags or wear makeup, which were products depicted in ads in the study. Further, it was found that as nostalgia proneness of the participant increased, so did the perceived attractiveness, expertise, and trustworthiness of the characters i.e., the higher the nostalgic feelings engendered (among participants) on seeing celebrity characters (Hello Kitty and Ms. Piggy), the higher their perceived attractiveness, trustworthiness, and expertise in a luxury

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branding context. Finally, Sheehan (2020) reported that attractiveness and expertise were significant predictors of spokescharacters’ fit, but surprisingly trustworthiness and nostalgia proneness were not.

In sum, it can be stated that since nostalgia engenders source trust, generates positive attitude towards advertised brand, positive affect, optimism, and empathy, and primes social connectedness, which leads to altruistic behaviour and future orientation, the presence of brand spokescharacters that prime nostalgic feelings in recycling messages may result in higher recycling intentions, as pro-environmental behaviours are by nature prosocial, i.e., they benefit not only self but also others.

2.4 SOURCE EFFECTIVENESS DIMENSIONS

Celebrities have been used as endorsers in advertisements since 1890 (Lehu, 1993). So, it is not a new phenomenon, but their usage has increased substantially over the last two decades (Fleck et al., 2012). As celebrities become famous and popular, advertisers rope them in to endorse their products.

Literature has well documented that celebrity endorsements improve advertisement effectiveness (Amos et al., 2008; Bergkvist & Zhou, 2016; Erdogan, 1999). Petty et al. (1983) reported that participants generally liked the product more under condition of celebrity endorsement (a famous athlete in this case) as compared to the non-celebrity condition. Celebrities are used by advertisers as they believe that high familiarity of famous personalities will lead to higher attention and recall of the advertisement (Ohanian, 1991). Other than message attention and brand recall, literature also shows that celebrity endorsers have higher positive impact on attitude towards advertising, brand and purchase intentions, as compared to non-celebrity endorsers (Erdogan, 1999). One of the main advantages of using celebrity endorsers is increased attention to the brand and breaking the advertising clutter (Sherman, 1985). As environmentalists struggle to get consumers’ attention (Wright et al., 2015), these findings suggest that using anthropomorphized spokescharacters as celebrity endorsers in recycling messages may help non-profits to reach the target audience effectively.

Prior literature on celebrity endorsements has identified three important source dimensions to evaluate the effectiveness of celebrity endorsements (Amos et al., 2008; Bergkvist & Zhou, 2016; Erdogan, 1999; Pornpitakpan, 2004). They include

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trustworthiness, attractiveness, and expertise. The research work during the mid-to- late twentieth century (Brock, 1967; Hovland et al., 1953; McGuire, 1985; Nelson, 1974; Rarick, 1963) laid the foundation of the development of these three dimensions and Ohanian (1990) developed a scale to measure celebrity endorsement effectiveness in terms of trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness of celebrity.

Ohanian (1990) found that purchase intentions were significantly correlated with attractiveness, trustworthiness, and expertise of the endorser. Expertise has been identified as a more important dimension than trustworthiness as contributing to source effectiveness (Homer & Kahle, 1990). However, the meta-analysis by Amos et al. (2008) revealed that trustworthiness is more dominant than expertise in influencing source effectiveness, followed by attractiveness. Further, a source may have different levels of these dimensions, such as a friend may be high on trustworthiness, but may lack expertise. On the other hand, a salesperson can have high level of knowledge, hence expertise, but may appear untrustworthy or a model can be attractive but not an expert. Therefore, in any given endorsement condition, a communicator’s effectiveness will depend on the perceived evaluation of these three dimensions by the audience; this evaluation will lead to the effectiveness of the endorser in an endorsement (Ohanian, 1991).

Using a Singaporean undergraduate sample, Pornpitakpan (2004) showed that all the three dimensions of source effectiveness were significant predictors of purchase intentions (using celebrities for products such as household appliances, clothes, muscle pain balm, and jewellery), with expertise the strongest predictor, followed by trustworthiness and attractiveness. Similarly, using a created and a real spokesperson, Sertoglu et al. (2014) found that all three dimensions of source effectiveness significantly predicted purchase intentions, however, expertise was the most important predictor in the case of a created one, whereas attractiveness was for a real one. The three dimensions are described in detail in the next sections.

2.4.1 Trustworthiness (Hovland et al., 1953, p. 21) defined trustworthiness as "the degree of confidence in the communicator's intent to communicate the assertions he/she considers most valid." They further suggested that credibility is a two-dimensional construct, consisting of expertise and trustworthiness. A source is considered to be credible since it is likely to know the truth, or because it is likely to tell the truth. The trust paradigm

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in communication is the listener's degree of confidence in, and level of acceptance of, the speaker and the message. In short, it is listener’s faith in the speaker (Ohanian, 1990).

Smith (1973) reported that trust is like an essential factor of credibility, if it is not there, no matter what other qualities a source has, it will not be considered a credible source. Some studies, however, have found that trustworthiness is not related to source credibility (Ohanian, 1991). Trustworthiness of the source engenders due to the perceived honesty, credibility, and integrity by the recipient (Fleck et al., 2012).

Literature also provides insights on the effect of trustworthiness. One such study showed that when the communicator has high perceived trustworthiness, an opinionated message was more effective in producing attitude change than when the message was a non-opinionated one (Miller & Baseheart, 1969). McGinnies and Ward (1980) conducted an experimental study, in which they manipulated the perceived level of expertise and trustworthiness of the source. They found that the dimension of trustworthiness was more important than expertise in lending credibility to the source, which resulted in higher persuasion. A source which was perceived both as expert and trustworthy resulted in most opinion change towards the issue mentioned in the message. That is, a trustworthy source was more persuasive irrespective of its expertness. Erdogan et al. (2001) conducted a survey with advertising practitioners to find out factors on the basis of which they selected celebrity endorsers. Out of the three source effectiveness dimensions, trustworthiness, was rated highest, followed by expertise and attractiveness.

As past studies report that people generally trust anthropomorphized spokescharacters (Dotz & Morton, 1996; Garretson & Niedrich, 2004; Luo et al., 2006), it is expected that spokescharacters may be perceived as a credible communicator when used in recycling messages, thus improving message persuasiveness and effectiveness. In the social marketing context, when celebrities are associated with a non-profit or a cause, they are sometime viewed with suspicion about their real motive because such association benefits celebrities as well. Therefore, celebrity credibility becomes an important dimension on which communication effectiveness will depend (Samman et al., 2009). Hence, brand spokescharacters can be effective communicators due to their high perceived trustworthiness.

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2.4.2 Expertise Hovland et al. (1953, p. 21) defined expertise as "the extent to which a communicator is perceived to be a source of valid assertions.” It is the knowledge that the source possesses about the product that leads to persuasiveness of the claims made in the advertisement (Ohanian, 1991). Source expertise is also defined as the perceived validity of the information provided by it (Erdogan, 1999), shaped by its perceived knowledge, experience and knowhow of the product being endorsed. For expertise, it is important to note that it does not matter if the endorser is really an expert; what matters is that the target audience should perceive it so (Hovland et al., 1953; Ohanian, 1991). Erdogan (1999) conducted a literature review on celebrity advertising and found that perceived credibility of the source is positively related to message effectiveness and persuasiveness. As a result, highly credible sources are more effective in influencing brand attitudes and purchase behaviours.

Past studies also reveal that the source’s perceived expertise has a positive impact on attitude change (Horai et al., 1974; Maddux & Rogers, 1980; Mills & Harvey, 1972; Ross, 1973). In an experimental study, Crano (1970) found that higher expertise of the source resulted in higher agreement with the advocated position among the subjects. In a selling context, an expert salesperson (as opposed to a non-expert one) was found to be more effective in convincing consumers to purchase a product (Woodside & Davenport Jr, 1974).

Different studies have reported source expertise to have a positive effect on brand evaluations as well (Eisend & Langner, 2010; Ohanian, 1991; Rossiter & Smidts, 2012). Ohanian (1991) reported an interesting finding, that only the perceived expertise of the endorser (and not attractiveness and trustworthiness) was significantly related to purchase intention. This shows that in some instances, source effectiveness engenders due to one dimension. Joseph (1977) reported interaction effect between perceived source attractiveness and expertise. Specifically, he found that when the source is perceived as an expert, its attractiveness in influencing participants’ choices becomes irrelevant. However, when the source was perceived as inexpert, participants showed greater level of agreement with the highly attractive source compared to the less attractive source.

Spokescharacters are perceived as an expert of the product they endorse, as consumers view them in several campaigns talking about or using the product. Such

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repetitive exposure gives validity to the perception that spokescharacters have knowledge and experience of the product (Hovland et al., 1953; McGinnies & Ward, 1980; Ohanian, 1991). This perceived expertise then results in the development of trust for the spokescharacters (Crosby et al., 1990; Doney & Cannon, 1997; Moorman et al., 1993). This finding is quite promising, as according to the source credibility model, perceived expertise, and trustworthiness of a source leads to persuasive communication (Ohanian, 1990). In their empirical study, Garretson and Niedrich (2004) found that brand spokescharacter’s expertise positively influenced its trustworthiness. Wang and Scheinbaum (2018) also showed that a celebrity’s expertise predicted trustworthiness in an airline industry context.

Sundar (2008) reported an ‘expertise heuristic’ phenomenon, wherein information coming from an expert source such as health professionals appears more credible. Even though spokescharacters are not an expert of environmental causes such as recycling, it can be assumed that their perceived expertise in their own field (e.g., Tony the Tiger as a breakfast cereal expert and Michelin Man as a tyre expert) will enhance their perceived trustworthiness and hence, use of brand spokescharacters in a recycling message may enhance its endorsement effectiveness and persuasiveness. As past research also shows that endorser’s expertise can engender trustworthiness, the following hypothesis is proposed.

H2: Spokescharacter expertise will positively influence the trustworthiness of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in a recycling message.

2.4.3 Attractiveness Attractiveness of a celebrity is an important dimension, which can enhance communication effectiveness (Joseph, 1982). However, studies report that attractive endorsers are effective for attractiveness-related products only (Kahle & Homer, 1985; Kamins, 1990). Also, the ‘attractiveness’ dimension has been measured with items such as ‘sexy’, ‘elegant’, ‘classy’, and ‘beautiful’ (Ohanian, 1990), which may not be suitable to evaluate an endorser in a social marketing context (Wheeler, 2009).

Attractiveness is an important factor which impacts a person’s initial judgement of another person (Baker & Churchill Jr, 1977; Chaiken, 1979; Kahle & Homer, 1985). Kelman (1961) asserted that a source is attractive if it occupies a role that the individual himself desires, like fame or life of a celebrity. Attractiveness does not mean only

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physical attractiveness, rather it encompasses other qualities as well, which a source may have (e.g., skills, attitude, personality, lifestyle) and which makes a self-defined relationship with the source in a way that it is satisfactory to a person. This kind of relationship is most common in the case of celebrity endorsement. The attractiveness of a celebrity makes consumers buy a product or service endorsed by them. Cohen and Golden (1972) also reported that the concept of identification (i.e., desire to identify with others) explains why people generally agree with the information provided by an attractive source such a celebrity. The dimension of attractiveness, together with source’s familiarity, likeability and similarity, constitute the source attractiveness model (McGuire, 1985).

Joseph (1982) found that there is a positive relationship between a source’s attractiveness and likeability, and attractive communicators positively influence opinion change and product evaluation. Other research studies also corroborated his findings. In an experimental study conducted among high school and college students, Snyder and Rothbart (1971) found that the persuasiveness of a message, relating to advocating lower speed limits for highways, was significantly higher when an attractive male communicator was used than under the condition of an unattractive communicator. Widgery and Ruch (1981) conducted an experimental study related to a social cause (i.e., agreement of participants on strict jail term for all drunken drivers) and found that the message was more persuasive when conveyed by a physically attractive source. This connection with social causes is heartening, as this may suggest that attractive spokescharacters may be able to convince people to support a social cause like recycling. In a literature review on celebrity advertising, Kaikati (1987) reported that using physically attractive communicators has positive outcomes, such as more favourable evaluations of the ad and the product advertised. Such communicators are also perceived to be having greater social power and are liked more as compared to unattractive communicators. In sum, physically attractive endorsers are considered more persuasive than unattractive ones.

The attractiveness dimension has yielded mixed results in past studies (Caballero & Pride, 1984; Kamins, 1990; Liu & Brock, 2011; Lord & Putrevu, 2009; Ohanian, 1991; Till & Busler, 2000). Further, the use of this dimension in non-profit context is rather limited (Wheeler, 2009). Interestingly, Wheeler (2009) suggested that attractiveness may not be an appropriate dimension when evaluating celebrity

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endorsement effectiveness in the social marketing context. However, Thomas and Johnson (2017) found that celebrity trustworthiness and attractiveness significantly predicted attitude towards social campaign, the cause and intention to change behaviour, with attractiveness having higher influence. This was probably due to the fact that university students comprised the sample.

Praxmarer (2011) posited that when an attractive endorser is used for a product that is unrelated to attractiveness, endorser’s attractiveness positively influences trustworthiness of the endorser, which then influences persuasion. Similar results were reported by Koernig and Page (2002) also using attractiveness related and unrelated service (hairdresser versus dentist). It was found that consumers perceived an attractive hairdresser as more expert and trusted their service more. However, for dentists, higher attractiveness reduced perceived expertness and trustworthiness. Till and Busler (2000) found that an attractive endorser (as opposed to an unattractive one) was perceived as more trustworthy by the participants. Patzer (1983) also reported similar findings, that physically attractive communicators are perceived as more trustworthy, expert and likable, irrespective of their audience gender. This is probably because physically attractive people are perceived as independent, masters of their fate and acting on their free will, as opposed to unattractive people (Miller, 1970). Hence, they are perceived to be not under the influence of others and have their own independent opinions based on their personal experiences. Such perceived qualities make them a highly credible source as well.

Given these arguments and considering social causes such as recycling as a type of product unrelated to attractiveness, a spokescharacter’s attractiveness will influence its trustworthiness when used in a recycling message. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H3: Spokescharacter attractiveness will positively influence the trustworthiness of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in a recycling message.

2.5 INFLUENCE OF SPOKESCHARACTER’S APPEAL ON CONSUMER PERCEPTIONS AND RECYCLING INTENTIONS

Friedman et al. (1978) conducted two studies to find out the attributes that most strongly correlate with source trust and found that celebrity trust was significantly

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correlated with all other dimensions tested in the study, which included awareness, liking, similarity, and attractiveness, but that the strongest correlation emerged with liking and similarity.

Liking is an important dimension in enhancing source effectiveness, because as researchers posit, liking for a source can lead to positive evaluations of the source on other, unrelated traits also, due to Halo Effect. That is, liking can help improve perceptions on other, unrelated individual traits such as trustworthiness. Thorndike (1920) first described the Halo Effect, which means that a high rating on one trait like physique for an individual by a rater may lead to higher ratings on other, unrelated traits such as intelligence or social skills.

Lachman and Bass (1985) described Halo Effect as an influence that affects an evaluator as he/she evaluates another individual/object on a series of individual traits, due to the overall liking for the individual/object. In a study conducted to capture halo effect, Lachman and Bass (1985) found that for persons who were highly liked, the mean scores of all individual traits were significantly higher than those who were rated low on the liking scale. It was also found that the correlations between liking ratings and the individual trait ratings were significantly positive and, in some cases, quite high. Fleck et al. (2012) also reported the halo effect in celebrity endorsement.

Based on the discussions on halo effect, it can be anticipated that since anthropomorphized spokescharacters are generally liked by children and adults alike (Callcott & Alvey, 1991), they may appear more trustworthy. Nelson (1974) reported that celebrities who are liked more are also trusted more, and quoted, “it is rare to find an individual who will like someone who he distrusted, or trust someone who he dislikes”.

Studies have reported a link between cuteness and trustworthiness (Masip et al., 2004) such that baby-faced individuals appear more honest as compared to those who are mature faced. Berry (1991) found baby-faced individuals were perceived as more sincere (one of the attributes of trustworthiness defined by Ohanian, 1990), whereas Brownlow (1992) and Brownlow and Zebrowitz (1990) found that higher trustworthiness was attributed more to baby-faced individuals than mature-faced ones.

As past studies have shown the link between the different attributes of appeal and source trustworthiness e.g., humour (Gruner, 2000), nostalgia (Callcott & Alvey,

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1991; Garretson & Niedrich, 2004; Sheehan, 2020), liking ((Friedman et al., 1978; Lachman & Bass, 1985; Nelson, 1974), cuteness ((Berry, 1991; Brownlow, 1992; Brownlow & Zebrowitz, 1990), it can be hypothesized that:

H4: Spokescharacter appeal will positively influence the trustworthiness of anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters in a recycling message.

Past research work has also shown positive influence of different attributes of appeal on behavioural intentions e.g., cuteness (Glocker et al., 2009; Keating, 2003; Wang et al., 2017), humour (Borden & Suggs, 2019; Jäger & Eisend, 2013; Nabi, 2016), and nostalgia (Cheung et al., 2013; Merchant et al., 2011; Mikulincer et al., 2005; Peter & Honea, 2012; Zhou et al., 2012). Therefore, it can be hypothesized that:

H5: Spokescharacter appeal will positively influence consumers’ recycling intentions.

2.6 MEDIATING EFFECTS OF SOURCE RELEVANCY

2.6.1 Relevancy of anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters Misra and Beatty (1990) defined the concept of congruency as the consistency between the highly relevant characteristics of the spokesperson with the highly relevant attributes of the brand endorsed. Congruency has been identified as a two- dimensional construct, consisting of relevancy and expectancy (Heckler & Childers, 1992). Relevancy refers to the extent to which information contained in the stimulus (e.g., a celebrity) contributes to or prevents a clear identification of the main theme of the message being communicated. In brand endorsements, if there is a clear meaning as to why a celebrity is used to promote a product or brand, then the celebrity is considered relevant for the endorsement. Expectancy refers to the degree to which an item (e.g., a celebrity) or piece of information ﬁts into a predetermined pattern or structure evoked by a message theme. That is, expectancy refers to the anticipation of the audience to see a particular type of celebrity due to the characteristics of the brand or product. Consumers also expect congruity between celebrity endorsers’ image and products they endorse. For instance, people expect a physically attractive model to promote cosmetics or fashion clothes, a dentist to endorse an oral care product, or an athlete to promote a pair of running shoes (Callcott & Phillips, 1996; Fleck et al., 2012; Ohanian, 1991).

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Kamins and Gupta (1994) stated that the higher the congruence between endorser’s image and the brand advertised, the more easily the message will be internalized. Interestingly, research has found that celebrities (as against non-celebrity equivalents) are considered more likable and attractive but less believable (Atkin & Block, 1983; Freiden, 1984), possibly due to lack of fit between them and the brand advertised. Martín and Crespo (2013) proposed four predictors of celebrity credibility in a social marketing context, viz. perceived fit between celebrity endorser and social cause, celebrity’s motivation to associate with the cause, audience’s attitude towards the celebrity and general perceived fit (i.e., appropriateness of celebrities for social marketing).

Fit between a celebrity and the brand endorsed can be functional, i.e. an energy bar promoted by an athlete or a sports person, a cancer foundation supported by a celebrity who survived cancer, or it can be symbolic where the celebrity and brand share the same image or core values (Martín & Crespo, 2013). When using celebrities for promoting social causes, symbolic fit is more prevalent as functional fit will be quite rare, as celebrities’ main area of work is not in the social sector.

At this juncture, it is important to consider how the audience evaluates whether a celebrity is fit for promoting social causes. Celebrities are well known, and consumers have a pre-existing image and attitude towards them. If they can find a good fit between the chosen celebrity’s image and the cause, they will positively evaluate the association, otherwise not. However, since it is presumed that social marketers will select popular and well-liked celebrities only to endorse social causes, the attitude towards these celebrities (i.e., liking or positive affect) will result in higher perceived fit, even when it does not exist. In fact, this is also what Fleck et al. (2012) reported, that liking towards celebrities can enhance the perceived fit between them and endorsed brand.

Anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters’ liking as a part of spokescharacter’s appeal will develop positive affect, which may result in perceived fit, and the associated humour can distract consumers from counterarguing that fit (Speck, 1991). Martín and Crespo (2013) found that in the social marketing context, attitude (i.e., liking) towards a celebrity predicted the fit between celebrity and nonprofit organization (NPO) and the fit, in turn, predicted celebrity credibility. Finally, celebrity credibility positively influenced behavioural intentions, i.e., willingness to

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associate with and recommend the advertised NPO to others. They concluded that the more likable a celebrity is, the better the perceived fit with the social cause and the higher the endorser effectiveness is. It is like affective information processing outweighing the cognitive one when the fit between a celebrity and social cause is evaluated. Therefore, a celebrity’s lack of expertise in the non-profit sector is overlooked due to the liking.

Fleck et al. (2012) also suggested that when a celebrity is well-liked, consumers can perceive a higher fit between him/her and any brand endorsed i.e., emotions can overrule rational thinking. They further suggested that a moderate level of incongruency between endorser and advertised brand can sometimes be beneficial (provided that consumers perceive it positively) as consumers elaborate more on the incongruent information. Based on these arguments related to likability and fit, for brand spokescharacters in a recycling message, relevancy can be achieved through the liking towards them, and lack of expectancy can generate more elaboration on the message, resulting in higher message effectiveness.

As source’s cuteness and humour engenders liking towards it (Casey & Ritter, 1996; Eisend, 2009; Karraker & Stern, 1990; Ritter et al., 1991) and nostalgia primes positive affect (Wildschut et al., 2006), the attributes of spokescharacter’s appeal will act in tandem to enhance its perceived fit as endorser for the recycling cause. Therefore, this study set out to investigate whether liking (as part of appeal construct) for brand spokescharacters can result in perceived fit between them and the recycling cause. Accordingly, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H6: Spokescharacter appeal will positively influence the relevancy of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in recycling message.

Much of the matchup hypothesis (i.e., perceived fit between celebrity and brand endorsed) research focuses on the physical attractiveness of the endorser, i.e., studies reported that using a physically attractive endorser is effective only for attractiveness- related products (Kamins, 1990). Till and Busler (2000) empirically showed that expertise, rather than attractiveness, was a better dimension to achieve higher perceived fit between endorser and the brand and as a result generated higher brand attitude but not purchase intention. This finding was in agreement with their previous study, which reported similar results (Till & Busler, 1998). Wright (2016) repeated the study using the same products and procedures as Till and Busler (2000) and found

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similar results. Recently, Sheehan (2020) found that anthropomorphized characters’ expertise was a significant predictor of their perceived fit in the luxury branding context. Therefore, it is hypothesized that:

H7: Spokescharacter’s expertise will positively influence the relevancy of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in a recycling message.

2.6.2 Effects of brand spokescharacters’ relevancy Anthropomorphized spokescharacters are designed by marketers in such a way so as to achieve congruency between them and the product endorsed. Examples include Pillsbury Doughboy, Michelin Man, M&M spokes-candies etc., leading to higher perceived credibility (Garretson & Niedrich, 2004). In their qualitative study, Callcott and Phillips (1996) also reported that respondents consider product and spokescharacter match to be important. However, Garretson and Niedrich (2004) found that spokescharacter’s relevancy did not predict trustworthiness. In their research work, Kamins and Gupta (1994) found that under the condition of high fit between spokesperson and product, spokesperson’s believability was high. In the social marketing context, studies have reported that higher perceived fit between endorser and the cause leads to higher source credibility (Martín & Crespo, 2013; Wheeler, 2009). Therefore, the following hypothesis is put forward:

H8: Spokescharacter relevancy will positively influence its trustworthiness.

Congruency has been researched between a brand and a new product category, another brand, an event, a cause, or an individual (Fleck & Quester, 2007; Maille & Fleck, 2011). Several studies have reported that higher perceived congruency between a celebrity and the brand/product endorsed results in greater advertising attitudes and purchase intentions(Batra & Homer, 2004; Erdogan & Baker, 2000; Kamins, 1989, 1990; Lynch & Schuler, 1994; Misra & Beatty, 1990; Till & Busler, 2000). Choi and Rifon (2012) found that purchase intentions are enhanced under the matchup condition, but only through brand and advertisement attitude. Sengupta et al. (1997) reported that when consumers see a relevance of a celebrity in an endorsement situation, attitudes induced are long term in nature. Similar findings were reported by (O'Mahony & Meenaghan, 1997), in that under the condition of fit between endorser and brand, purchase intentions are stronger. However, Kirmani and Shiv (1998) and Lee and Thorson (2008) demonstrated that fit has a positive influence on brand

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evaluations under the conditions of high involvement only. Wheeler (2009) also reported that under the condition of high fit between celebrity and cause, intention to volunteer time or donate money to a non-profit is higher. As higher perceived fit between celebrity and endorsed brand leads to higher attitude and intentions(Fleck et al., 2012; Kamins, 1990; Misra & Beatty, 1990; Till & Busler, 2000; Wright, 2016), it is hypothesized that:

H9: Spokescharacter relevancy will positively influence recycling intentions.

2.7 2.7 RECYCLING ATTITUDE AND INTENTIONS

2.7.1 Background The term ‘recycling’ can be defined as the process through which materials previously used are collected, processed, remanufactured, and reused (Ruiz, 1993). One of the serious consequences of rising population, affluence, and rapid urbanization is generation of an enormous amount of household waste (Mahar et al., 2007). Globally, managing the increasing amount and complexity of household waste is becoming a daunting task for city councils (Webster, 2012). With increased waste comes a plethora of environmental problems such as water and soil pollution, greenhouse gas emission, loss of biodiversity, and blocking of precious land resources (Miller & Spoolman, 2011). Several scholars have agreed that most environmental problems result from the daily activities of humans, which include but are not limited to consumption, waste disposal, travel, and energy usage.

Increase in population and associated consumerism has resulted in an annual waste generation of around 2 billion tons globally, which is expected to grow only in coming years as nations become richer. Not surprisingly, waste management and recycling has become a critical issue facing environmentalists today (Varotto & Spagnolli, 2017), resulting in increased interest in understanding recycling as a way of waste management (Chen & Tung, 2010). Recycling is considered one of the most promising ways to overcome this problem. Even though more than half of all solid waste is recyclable, most of it ultimately ends up filling land sites (Mancini et al., 2007). Considering these concerns, this study examines how recycling rates can be increased by effectively communicating about it.

It is noteworthy that continuous efforts to understand and improve recycling behaviour endure even though attitudes towards the environment and recycling

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continue to improve (Arli et al., 2020). Some measures taken globally to increase recycling, range from legal requirements to recycle, waste charging schemes, kerbside recycling collection and promotion of waste separation, to promotional campaigns for recycling (De Jaeger et al., 2011; Tencati et al., 2016; Wan et al., 2017). In this regard, no notable previous study has examined the use of anthropomorphized spokescharacters as a part of the recycling communication strategy, even though the attributes of spokescharacter such as nostalgia and cuteness, have been shown to positive influence recycling intention and behaviour. For example, in multiple studies, Wang et al. (2017) demonstrated positive influence on behavioural intentions and actual recycling behaviour when participants were exposed to Kindchenschema cuteness. Recently, Zhang et al. (2020) showed, across four different studies, that nostalgia when primed through using music, images, and recalling a past event enhanced recycling intentions and actual recycling behaviour among participants for products such as raffle tickets, used paper and paper cups, bottles, computer equipment, and used clothes. However, a humorous recycling slogan was found no more effective in influencing actual recycling behaviour for used batteries (Hansmann et al., 2009).

2.7.2 Applying the Theory of Planned Behaviour to understand consumers’ recycling attitude and intentions Recycling is a complex behaviour and considerable individual effort is required in terms of sorting, sometimes washing, storing, and correctly disposing of recyclables (Boldero, 1995). Understanding the factors that influence recycling intentions of people will help design effective recycling programs at both government and community levels (Pakpour et al., 2014).

In their meta-analysis, Geiger et al. (2019) examined the factors used by past studies to understand recycling and grouped them into two broad categories, viz. individual factors, and contextual factors. Attitude toward recycling, social norms (both descriptive and injunctive norms), perceived behavioural control, knowledge about recycling, past behaviour, personal norms, values, and anticipated affect were considered individual factors whereas contextual factors included presence of recycling facilities, recycling bin, type of household, and owner etc.

Geiger et al. (2019) reported that among individual factors, recycling self- identity (i.e., degree to which a person see himself or herself as a person who recycles

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waste), personal norms towards recycling (i.e., feelings of moral obligation to engage in recycling), past recycling behaviour and perceived behavioural control were strong predictors of recycling, in that order.

Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) is one of the most popular models applied to study recycling intentions (Mannetti et al., 2004). The universality of the TPB in predicting recycling intention and behaviours is well documented, as numerous studies demonstrating that were conducted in both developing and developed countries such as Australia (Chan & Bishop, 2013), Turkey (Oztekin et al., 2017), UK (Davis & Morgan, 2008), Iran (Pakpour et al., 2014) United States (Largo-Wight et al., 2012), Malaysia (Ramayah et al., 2012), and Hong Kong (Cheung et al., 1999).

Like previous positive brand experiences encourage consumers to buy a brand again, past recycling behaviour should motivate a person to continue recycling in the future. Ouellette and Wood (1998) suggested that past behaviour is a good predictor of future behaviour when it is performed frequently and under stable conditions. Hence, Knussen and Yule (2008) conducted a cross-sectional study in Glasgow using an extended TPB framework and found that the attitude-intention relationship is stronger for those who recycled most of their waste in the last three months as compared to those who had recycled little or none of their waste. Hence, past behaviour played a significant role in future behaviour.

Oztekin et al. (2017) conducted a study among Turkish participants drawn from two large public universities with recycling facilities, using the extended TPB including the variable of past behaviour. They found that females (as compared to males) have higher attitudes towards recycling and intentions to recycle. Analysis combined male and female data using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), and all four variables (i.e., attitude, perceived behavioural control, subjective norms, and past behaviour) were found to be significantly correlated with recycling intention, with perceived behavioural control and past behaviour having a medium effect size while the remaining two factors have small effect sizes.

In another study, White and Hyde (2012) included the variables such as self- identity, conscientiousness, and past behaviour in the TPB model to explain the recycling behaviour of Australians. It was reported that past behaviour and self- identity had the strongest correlation with intention, and intention and past behaviour were the strongest correlates of recycling behaviour. Further data analysis using the

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SEM technique revealed that attitude, subjective norm, self-identity, and past behaviour had significant direct effects on intention and that intention and past behaviour predicted self-reported behaviour. Further, past behaviour was found to be a significant predictor of all the constructs of the model (i.e., TPB variables, self- identity, and conscientiousness). Also, past behaviour predicted both recycling intention and behaviour. Table 2.4 summarizes prior research that studied antecedents of recycling intentions and behaviour.

Table 2.4 Summary of past research investigating antecedents of recycling intentions

Study Antecedents Findings Knussen & Yule Attitude towards recycling, Lack of recycling habit is cited by (2008) subjective norms and PBC, participants as one of the main reasons lack of recycling habit, past for not recycling and is moderately behaviour associated with past behaviour and recycling intention Oztekin et al. Attitude towards recycling, Females have higher attitudes towards (2017) subjective norms and PBC, recycling and intentions to recycle as past behaviour compared to males; for males, past behaviour and PBC were the strongest predictors of recycling intention, whereas for females, they were PBC and attitudes towards recycling Carrus et al. Attitude towards recycling, Recycling intention was predicted by (2008) subjective norms and PBC, desire and past behaviour; desire was desire, anticipated emotions, predicted by subjective norm, negative past behaviour emotions, and past behaviour Knussen et al. Attitude towards recycling, Past behaviour, attitude towards (2004) subjective norms and PBC, recycling, subjective norms, PBC, and past behaviour, perceived perceived habit were significant habit, lack of recycling predictors of intentions facilities Pakpour et al. Attitude towards recycling, Age was positively related to recycling (2014) subjective norms, PBC, moral behaviour, males recycled more than obligation, self-identity, action females; moral obligation was the planning, past behaviour strongest predictor, followed by self- identity, subjective norms, PBC, action planning, and attitudes. White & Hyde Attitude towards recycling, Attitude toward recycling, self-identity (2012) subjective norms, PBC, self- and subjective norm predicted identity, past behaviour, intention, but not PBC; past behaviour conscientiousness predicted intention Note: PBC = Perceived behavioural control

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TPB variables (i.e., attitude towards recycling, perceived behavioural control, and subjective norms) and past recycling behaviour were predominantly used by previous studies to explain variations in recycling intention. As the present study includes only attitude towards recycling in the conceptual model, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and past behaviour will be used as control variables to isolate the effect of brand spokescharacters on recycling intentions.

Trustworthiness has been linked with positively influencing attitudes of consumers (Garretson & Niedrich, 2004; Martín & Crespo, 2013; McGinnies & Ward, 1980; Miller & Baseheart, 1969) and according to TPB attitude leads to intentions; accordingly, the following hypotheses are proposed:

H10: Spokescharacter trustworthiness will positively influence affective attitude towards recycling.

H11: Affective attitude towards recycling will positively influence the recycling intention.

2.7.3 Recycling involvement as moderator Zaichkowsky (1985) defined involvement as “a person’s perceived relevance of the object based on inherent needs, values, and interests”. Marketing literature describes ‘involvement’ in three different contexts, involvement with advertisements, involvement with products/brands, and involvement with purchase decisions (Zaichkowsky, 1985). For this study’s purpose, involvement with a product is used, and product here is recycling cause.

Consumers for whom a product has higher personal importance or who have greater commitment towards a brand are said to be highly involved with product or brand (Howard & Sheth, 1969). Zaichkowsky (1985) mentioned that involvement with a product is determined by the relevance of the product to the needs and values of the consumer. Therefore, if a product is highly relevant to the need satisfaction or to the values of a consumer, she/he will be highly involved with the product. For instance, an overweight person trying to lose weight will be highly involved with a weight loss product. Extending this argument, a consumer for whom recycling is relevant to need satisfaction (e.g., recycling is financially rewarding or doing recycling will enhance one’s image in front of others or provide social recognition) or appeals to his/her value system (e.g., recycling is beneficial for society at large, and I am responsible to do it

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for the benefit of the others) will be highly involved with it. Hupfer and Gardner (1971) defined involvement as a general level of interest in or concern about an issue. This definition suggests that those consumers who are aware of the benefits of recycling, the harmful effects of not doing it, or are concerned about environmental issues, will be highly involved with recycling.

Petty et al. (1983) advocated two routes to persuasion by achieving attitude change: the central route, and the peripheral route. The central route to persuasion involves careful evaluation of the merits and demerits of the advocated position, whereas on the peripheral route, consumers do not undertake a careful evaluation of the arguments but rather accept the advocated position as it is associated with positive cues such as an attractive celebrity endorser, humour, or pleasant images. They also stated that it is important to understand when consumers will take either of the two routes to persuasion. Involvement with a product or issue is found to be an important variable, which influences the persuasion route consumers take, such that peripheral cues are important under the condition of low involvement, whereas argument quality becomes important under the condition of high involvement.

Another theoretical standpoint, i.e., the tenets of Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) suggested by Petty and Cacioppo (1981), present that elaboration likelihood may be different depending on the personal relevance or importance of the advertised issue or product to the consumer. Specifically, when personal relevance (i.e., involvement) is high, elaboration likelihood will be higher, and consumers may focus more on argument quality and cognitive information processing will dominate affective processing (Petty & Cacioppo, 1979). On the other hand, when personal relevance (i.e., involvement) is low, elaboration likelihood will be lower, and consumers will look for peripheral cues such as an attractive endorser, humour, pleasant images etc. and affective information processing will dominate (Chaiken, 1980).

In their study, Petty et al. (1983) found that under the condition of low product involvement, celebrity endorsers significantly influenced product attitude but not under the high product involvement condition. This means that peripheral cues were more important in driving attitudes under the low involvement condition only. Yoon and Tinkham (2013) also reported that humorous ads were more effective in influencing attitudes for less involved participants than non-humorous ones. As brand

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spokescharacters in a recycling message will be considered a peripheral cue, it is expected that brand spokescharacter’s influence on attitude and intentions will be more pronounced or may be limited to participants who are less involved with recycling. Hence, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H12: Spokescharacter’s attributes will influence recycling intentions differently for low involved participants than for high involved participants.

2.8 RESEARCH FRAMEWORK AND SUMMARY OF HYPOTHESES

The purpose of this chapter was to provide a comprehensive literature review of anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters and the effects on consumers’ recycling attitudes and intentions. Figure 2.7 summarizes the conceptual model, which suggests that several attributes of a brand spokescharacter will influence consumers’ attitude and intentions towards recycling. These include the brand spokescharacter’s appeal, its trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness and also its relevancy.

Figure 2.7 Conceptual model

Source: developed for this study

Following the comprehensive literature review, the following hypotheses were formulated. Figure 2.8 shows the hypotheses in the research framework.

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H1: The appeal of brand spokescharacter will consists of its liking, cuteness, humour, and nostalgia.

H2: Spokescharacter expertise will positively influence the trustworthiness of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in a recycling message.

H3: Spokescharacter attractiveness will positively influence the trustworthiness of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in a recycling message.

H4: Spokescharacter appeal will positively influence the trustworthiness of anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters in a recycling message.

H5: Spokescharacter appeal will positively influence consumers’ recycling intentions.

H6: Spokescharacter appeal will positively influence the relevancy of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in recycling message.

H7: Spokescharacter expertise will positively influence the relevancy of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in a recycling message.

H8: Spokescharacter relevancy will positively influence the trustworthiness of the anthropomorphized spokescharacter in a recycling message.

H9: Spokescharacter relevancy will positively influence recycling intentions.

H10: Spokescharacter trustworthiness will positively influence affective attitude towards recycling.

H11: Affective attitude towards recycling will positively influence the recycling intention.

H12: Spokescharacter’s attributes will influence recycling intentions differently for low involved participants than for high involved participants.

It is to be noted that outcome of H1 will be used to answer RQ1 and the outcome of all the other hypotheses will help answer RQ2.

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Figure 2.8 Conceptual framework and key hypotheses

Notes: Past recycling behaviour, subjective norms towards recycling, and perceived behavioural control will be control variables. Recycling involvement will be a moderator.

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Chapter 3: Research Design

3.1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter describes the research design adopted to address the research questions of the study. More specifically, section 3.2 discusses the research paradigm selected for this study and offers a justification for the same. This is followed by the research methodology (section 3.3) and research methods (section 3.4). Section 3.5 then covers the sampling strategy and participants of the study. Next, in section 3.6, the instruments used for data collection are discussed, followed by data collection and analysis procedures in section 3.7. Finally, section 3.8 discusses the ethics considerations of the research study. Figure 3.1 summarizes the outline of this chapter.

Figure 3.1 Outline of Chapter 3

3.2 RESEARCH PARADIGM

The word ‘paradigm’ originated in early 1960s when the American philosopher Thomas Kuhn (Kuhn, 1996/1962) first used it to mean a philosophical way of thinking. A research paradigm represents beliefs and assumptions, based on which a researcher perceives the world. Such perception then acts as a thinking framework that guides the approach of the researcher towards the researched problem (Guba & Lincoln, 1994; Jonker, 2010). It has been stressed that researchers must be clear about the research paradigm they will follow before undertaking a social study, as it impacts the way a problem is framed and analysed (Catterall, 2000; Creswell, 2009; Neuman, 2011). Researchers have identified two main dimensions on which research paradigms are distinguished from one other. They are ontology and epistemology (Laughlin, 2004).

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Whereas ontology answers the question of what reality (or knowledge) is, epistemology defines the ways or approaches to know that reality (or knowledge).

Ontologically speaking, there are two ways to look at reality. The first one is termed as objectivist or realist (Neuman, 2011) approach which states that reality exists out there in the world to be explored, is external and independent of people and their interpretations of it and there is only a single reality which can be measured and explained. The second one is termed as subjectivist approach, which states that there is no single reality, that reality is dependent on individuals and is created by them (Wahyuni, 2012).

Epistemologically speaking, there are two ways to know reality, one is the positivist approach and other is the constructivist or interpretivist approach. First proposed by a French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857), the positivist paradigm defines a worldview to research, which is grounded in what is known as the scientific method of investigation (Kivunja & Kuyini, 2017). Positivists maintain that reality can be measured using a scientific approach by developing numeric measures. They start with an existing theory, develop hypotheses based on it, collect data, and analyse it using statistical tools to accept or reject the hypotheses (Wahyuni, 2012). This is also referred to as the classical deductive approach to the research. Positivism also focuses on the presence of a cause-and-effect relationship and believes that results from a small sample of individuals is generalizable to the entire population (Hallebone, 2009). Constructivism or interpretivism, on the other hand, believes that reality is socially constructed by individuals and their perceptions of it. Since different individuals have different experiences, knowledge, and perceptions, their interpretation of reality is different, which leads to different versions of reality. Constructivists, therefore, reject the view that there exists a single reality (Hennink et al., 2012).

This research study took the objectivist approach to reality and followed the positivist approach to understand the influence of brand spokescharacters on recycling intentions of consumers. Using a positivist approach, this study used the social influence theory (Kelman, 1961), source credibility and source attractiveness model (Ohanian, 1990), match-up hypothesis (Kamins, 1990), Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) proposed by (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) and Halo effect (Thorndike, 1920) to develop its conceptual framework and generate associated hypotheses, which were

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tested by collecting and analysing data using statistical tools and techniques. Specifically, it was hypothesized that the use of anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters in recycling messages will enhance the recycling intentions of consumers.

3.3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Keeves (1997) defined research methodology as a broad term comprising research design, methods, approaches, and well-planned procedures used in a research inquiry to address research questions. Therefore, data gathering, participants, instruments used, and data analysis are all parts of the broad field of methodology. Further, while deciding on the research methodology for a study, the researcher must ask the question, “how shall I go about obtaining the desired data, knowledge and understandings that will enable me to answer my research question and thus make a contribution to knowledge?” (Kivunja & Kuyini, 2017).

In that regard, explanatory research tries to find why certain observations are reported as compared to descriptive research studies, which merely report what was observed (Babbie, 2015). This research study was explanatory in nature as it tried to find not only the effects of using spokescharacters in a recycling message, but also why these effects were observed. For instance, spokescharacter’s appeal and expertise were hypothesized to significantly increase perceived relevancy and trustworthiness.

Specifically, a nomothetic approach to explanatory research was followed. Accordingly, a set of few independent variables (i.e., appeal, expertise, and attractiveness of spokescharacter) that can explain the variation in the outcome (i.e., intentions to recycle) was looked at. Such an approach aims to obtain objective knowledge through scientific methods and uses quantitative methods for producing statistically significant results (Babbie, 2015). Further, Cohen et al. (2000) explained that the positivist paradigm assumes that reality can be measured, and these measurable outcomes rest on four assumptions, namely, determinism, empiricism, parsimony, and generalizability. Determinism states that events are caused by some other factors so in order to understand events, researchers must explore the factors causing them. Empiricism suggests that in order to investigate a research problem, data must be collected to support the theoretical framework and test the hypotheses derived from the framework. Parsimony refers to the attempts by the researcher to explain the

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phenomena they study in the most economical way and finally, generalizability refers to the applicability of research findings from the study to other contexts and over the entire population. Based on these assumptions, the positivist paradigm advocates a quantitative research methodology to conduct research. This is why this study used a quantitative methodology. The key elements of the research design are summarized in Table 3.1. The next section describes the research method used for this study in detail.

Table 3.1 Summary of elements of the research design

Element of research Used in this study design Research paradigm Ontology: Realism Epistemology: Positivism

Research aims Deductive approach was used as existing (Inductive or deductive) theories/models were used to develop the conceptual framework and test related hypotheses.

Research methodology Quantitative

Research methods Between-subjects experimental design with a control group using online survey.

Research data Data was collected first-hand from participants by (Primary or secondary data) administering an online questionnaire, hence using primary data for analysis.

Research data Unit of analysis is guided by the research question of (Data sources and unit of the study. As this study focused on how brand analysis) spokescharacters influenced consumers’ intention to recycle, the unit of analysis was individuals. Since the data was collected from individuals, data sources were also individuals.

Timescale of study As this study was not looking at changing trends (e.g., (Cross-section or changing intentions to recycle) across a time period, Longitudinal) it was a cross-sectional study i.e., data was collected at a single point in time.

Location of study As the study involved exposing participants to (Field or lab study) different treatment conditions in a controlled setting, a laboratory research setting was used.

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3.4 RESEARCH METHOD

The main research question of this study is: What is the influence of brand spokescharacters on consumers’ recycling attitudes and behaviour? Specifically, this study explored the influence of brand spokescharacters’ appeal, attractiveness, and expertise on consumers’ recycling intentions, mediated through their perceived relevancy, trustworthiness, and affective attitude towards recycling. This research study used an experimental design to collect data. The justification for the chosen method is described next.

3.4.1 Justification for using experiments Experiments are conducted to study causal relationships between variables. So, there is a cause and effect in a simple experiment. Yaremko et al. (1982) defined experiments as a method in which one or more independent variables are manipulated to observe their effects on one or more dependent variables. Experimental method was used in this study to achieve two purposes: first, to see whether presence of spokescharacter in a recycling message positively affected recycling attitudes and intentions as compared to a control group and second, since the model developed for this study was to be tested by using Structural Equation Modelling, using different spokescharacters generated sufficient variability in the data set on different variables.

In this study, spokescharacters’ attributes are independent variables, and recycling intention is the dependent variable. It is also important to note that independent variables must be manipulative, i.e., it is possible to change them in some way (i.e., type or quantity) to observe their impact on the dependent variable. Therefore, this study’s independent variables were manipulated in the following way:

(1) Showing different types of spokescharacters (i.e., animal, mythical and product personification) in a recycling message with varying scores on their attributes. (2) Using a recycling logo instead of brand spokescharacters to a treatment group and not showing any recycling message to the control group to capture the base level scores on attitude towards recycling and intentions to recycle. Nineteenth century philosopher John Stuart Mill proposed that the causal relationship between cause and effect exists if the following three conditions are met: (1) the cause is known to precede the effect, (2) the cause is related to the effect and

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(3) there is no alternate plausible explanation known for the effect other than the cause (Shadish et al., 2002). This study meets these three conditions as follows:

(1) Participants in different treatment groups were exposed to different spokescharacters in the recycling message first (cause) and then attitude towards recycling and recycling intentions were (Hennink et al., 2012)ed (effect). Hence, the cause preceded the effect. (2) The correlation coefficient between spokescharacter’s attributes and dependent variables such as recycling attitudes and recycling intentions were significant at .01 level. Therefore, cause and effect were related. (3) Past studies have established that different variables such as subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, and past recycling behaviour influence intentions to recycle. To rule out alternative explanations in the variation of the effects, these variables were included as control variables.

3.4.2 Control for confounds Confounds are variables that impact both the independent and dependent variable, and therefore, a spurious relationship appears to exist between independent and dependent variables (Shadish et al., 2002). In this study, for example, a confound variable would have been some variable(s) which would impact dependent variables (i.e., intention to recycle) as well as brand spokescharacter attributes. As literature shows, most of the variables that could affect intention to recycle such as subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and past recycling behaviour would not directly influence spokescharacter’s attributes. Therefore, the threat of confounds in the present study was low.

3.4.3 Randomized experiment design This study used a randomized experimental design, pioneered by Sir Ronald Fisher in 1926. In this method of experiment, the units of study (i.e., people, animals, institutions, or others) are randomly assigned to different treatment conditions. In the present study, the units, i.e., participants, were randomly assigned to different treatment conditions using the Qualtrics platform’s feature of random assignment of participants. The advantage of using this method is that the various experimental groups created in the process are probabilistically similar to each other on an average. This ensures that the observable differences between the groups (such as attitude

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towards recycling and intention to recycle) are due to treatment effects and not due to differences between the groups that existed before the start of the study (Shadish et al., 2002).

For this study, it is important to note that demographic variables such as age, gender, income, and education affect the environmental attitudes of people, which in turn influence ecological behavioural intentions such as intention to recycle along with other factors such as subjective norms, past behaviour, and perceived behavioural control. Hence, in order to capture the influence of brand spokescharacters on intention to recycle, it was important that different treatment groups as well as control groups were as similar as possible on these characteristics. Random assignment can ensure this, and chi-square and ANOVA tests can reveal if there were any significant differences on these parameters among the groups (discussed in Chapter 4).

3.4.4 Overview of the experimental design Researchers have outlined different designs used in randomized experimental studies such as basic randomized design, basic randomized design comparing two treatments, alternate treatment designs, factorial design and so on (Keppel, 1991; Shadish et al., 2002). This study used ‘multiple-treatments and control design’.

In ‘multiple-treatments and control design’, participants are randomly assigned to different treatment conditions and to a control group, which does not receive the treatment. In this study, different treatment conditions were recycling messages with a recycling logo and different spokescharacters as endorsers. The control group did not see any version of the recycling message.

3.4.5 Creating experimental manipulations (selection of different brand spokescharacters) Pre-test

The purpose of the pre-test was to select two spokescharacters of each type (i.e., animal, mythical, and product personification) from a list of spokescharacters developed as explained below.

1) A search query was run on Google search engine with the search string “America’s favourite brand mascots”. Based on the results and using the following web sources, a list of each type of brand spokescharacter was prepared.

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a. https://crestline.com/c/brand-mascots-and-logo-designs-that-work b. https://www.businessinsider.com/the-greatest-brand-mascots-in- american-history?r=AU&IR=T c. https://blazepress.com/2014/12/50-iconic-brand-mascots/ d. https://www.pinterest.com.au/dalebeck549/brand-mascots/ e. https://erinsweeneydesign.com/marketing/a-history-of-the-most- iconic-brand-mascots-since-1877/ 2) Then eight animal types, six mythical types and six product personified types of brand spokescharacters were shortlisted based on consultation with experts i.e., research supervisors of this study (see Appendix A). Using these shortlisted spokescharacters, a pre-test questionnaire was developed in Qualtrics to select spokescharacters for main survey (See Appendix B). After ethics approval was obtained from the University Ethics Committee, the pre- test questionnaire was distributed to higher degree research (HDR) students in the QUT Business School, with the purpose of obtaining feedback and suggestions regarding understanding of the questions, wordings, any changes required etc. Apart from minor wording corrections, there were no major revisions suggested at this stage. The revised pre-test questionnaire was administered online to 90 participants using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform. One set of spokescharacters (out of animal, mythical, or product personified) was randomly assigned to each participant. Accordingly, one group of spokescharacters was evaluated by 30 participants. Based on data analysis, two spokescharacters of each type (one highly suitable and one least suitable as an endorser for the recycling cause) were selected. The six spokescharacters finalised to be used as endorsers were Tony the Tiger, Mr. Clean, and the Michelin Man (as highly suitable as endorsers for a recycling message) and Coco the Monkey, Gnome, and M&M Red spokes-candy (as least suitable as potential endorsers for a recycling message). This is similar to the process followed by Martín and Crespo (2013), who conducted a similar pre-test to shortlist human celebrities for use in social messages. Six different spokescharacters were chosen to facilitate the data analysis, as explained next.

Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) is proposed to be used to detect significant differences in dependent variables among different experimental

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groups, which would help answer the RQ2, i.e., if presence of spokescharacters significantly enhance recycling intentions as compared to control group, it shows positive influence of using these characters in recycling message. Post MANCOVA analysis, data from six spokescharacters’ conditions are to be merged and used for SEM analysis to test the hypotheses associated with the proposed conceptual framework developed in chapter 2. Therefore, six different brand spokescharacters were used to generate sufficient variability in the data set on different variables, so that all hypotheses can be tested in the causal model (Currás-Pérez et al., 2009; Martín & Crespo, 2013). Whereas multiple regression (MR) can analyse the influence of multiple independent variables on a single dependent variable, SEM analysis allows a researcher to study multiple relationships simultaneously, i.e., between multiple independent variables and multiple dependent variables. Further, in MR a variable can either be independent or dependent, whereas in SEM the same variable can don both roles (Hair et al., 2014). Given the conceptual framework of this study, the use of SEM analysis is appropriate to analyse the relationship between different variables.

3.4.6 Overview of the treatment groups for the main study Table 3.2 outlines the seven experimental groups used for conducting MANCOVA analysis while Figure 3.2. shows different versions of recycling messages used in the study. Apart from these, one was control group which didn’t see any version of the recycling message and directly responded on control variables and dependent variables.

Table 3.2 Eight experimental groups in this study

Condition Description Treatment group with Participants in this group were shown the recycling animal spokescharacter as message urging people to recycle with an animal endorser brand spokescharacter as endorser. Two versions were used (See Figure 3.2 (a)). Treatment group with Participants in this group were shown the recycling mythical spokescharacter as message urging people to recycle with a mythical endorser brand spokescharacter as endorser. Two versions were used (See Figure 3.2 (b)). Treatment group with Participants in this group were shown the recycling product personified message urging people to recycle with a product spokescharacter as endorser personified brand spokescharacter as endorser (See Figure 3.2 (c)).

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Treatment group with Participants in this group were shown the recycling recycling logo as visual message urging people to recycle without brand element spokescharacter as endorser. Instead of the spokescharacter image, a standard recycling logo was used in the message (See Figure 3.2 (d)). No exposure to recycling This group directly reported their recycling attitudes message and intentions, together with control variables data.

Figure 3.2 Different versions of recycling message used in this study

(a) Animal brand spokescharacters as endorser in recycling message

(b) Mythical brand spokescharacters as endorser in recycling message

(d) Recycling logo in recycling message

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3.4.7 Control for threats to internal and external validity This section describes the eight threats to internal validity in an experimental study, identified by Campbell and Stanley (1966) and how they were controlled in this study.

(1) History: During the course of the experiment, or just before the experiment is conducted, any major external event can occur, which can confound the experimental results. Considering the nature of this study, major climate change events such as bushfires, floods, or newspaper coverage of an international environment summit may influence people’s general attitudes towards the environment, which may lead to higher recycling intentions. However, since such events equally affected all treatment groups as well as the control group, this threat was not so high. (2) Maturation: Generally, a concern for long-term or longitudinal studies, maturation refers to biological or physiological changes that occur in participants (becoming wiser, understanding research purpose, growing older etc.), which may impact the results. Since this research was a cross-sectional study, these threats were not present. For short studies such as this one, threats may arise as participants may become tired, bored, sleepy or hungry during experiments, which may impact results. This threat was controlled by keeping the study short and informing the participants beforehand about the approximate time to complete the study, so that they were mentally prepared. Moreover, since participants can choose their own time and place to complete the online questionnaire, this threat was low. (3) Testing: This factor deals with the threat arising due to testing and re-testing the participants, such as during pre-tests and post-tests. For instance, participants may guess the purpose of the research and give answers in post- tests not due to treatment, but due to the learning that happened during the pre- test. In this study, there was no pre-test and hence the threat was not applicable. (4) Instrumentation: This threat may occur due to change in the measurement instrument used in the pre-test and post-test or the use of a different operational definition for a key construct measured in the study. It can also occur between different treatment groups observed by different experimenters on some subjective parameter (e.g., observing the degree of lethargy or activeness

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among participants in a drug effect study). Hence, the changes reported are due to the experiment instruments themselves, and not due to the treatment condition. In this study, there was no pre-test and also data was collected online, so there was no threat of subjective evaluation by the researcher. (5) Regression: This type of threat may occur when participants with extreme scores (e.g., very high or very low) on some parameters are assigned to a particular treatment condition (e.g., students with poor grades in English assigned to an English improvement class). With repeated testing, the scores of such students would regress to the mean (i.e., an improvement), even though no treatment condition was present. In this study, participants were randomly assigned to the treatment conditions and not on the basis of any pre-test or other scores, hence the threat was low in this study. (6) Selection biases: This threat arises when participants cannot be assigned randomly to different treatment conditions. As this study randomly assigned participants to different conditions, the threat was not there. (7) Experimental mortality: This threat engenders due to dropouts from different treatment condition groups, resulting in dissimilar groups. In this study, the threat was not there. (8) Demoralization: Participants in the control group may feel demoralised as they feel they are missing something important the treatment group participants are getting (e.g., in educational improvement programs). Such demoralization may lower the performance of the control group and enhance the relative performance of the treatment group, over and above the effect of the treatment. In this study, however, such kind of threat did not occur as the different groups were not aware of other conditions of groups. It is also important to note that random assignment can address all types of threats to internal validity except experimental maturity (Slack & Draugalis, 2001). As this study assigned participants to different conditions randomly, the internal threats were accounted for. Since the sample for this study was drawn from Amazon’s MTurk platform, which is representative of U.S population (Paolacci et al., 2010), the findings from the study can be extended to U.S population in general. Hence, using MTurk sample controls for threats for external validity.

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3.5 SAMPLING STRATEGY AND PARTICIPANTS

Table 3.3 summarizes the sampling strategy used in this study.

Table 3.3 Sampling strategy

Particulars Used in this study

Population United States residents above 18 years old

Sampling procedure Convenience sampling

Sampling frame Amazon’s Mechanical Turk participants who are U.S residents and are above 18 years old. Sample size (Pre-test) N =90 Recommended sample N= 392 (see 3.5.1 sample size calculation for details) size (main study) using G*Power software and meeting SEM analysis’ requirement Actual sample size N= 468 achieved

3.5.1 Sample size calculation For the main study, the sample size was determined using G* Power 3.1 software (Faul et al., 2007). Selecting the appropriate test (ANCOVA and a priori analysis) and inserting relevant data, i.e., alpha = 0.05, power= 0.80, medium effect size= 0.20 (Cohen, 1988), a sample size of 366 was required (i.e., 46 cases per group). Another consideration in calculating the sample size was the number of items to be analysed using SEM for the merged data from six brand spokescharacters’ conditions. As the number of items associated with constructs used in the study’s model is 30 (see main questionnaire Appendix C), and a ratio of 1:10 (10 cases per item) is recommended to determine the sample size for SEM analysis (Hair et al., 2014), the required sample was 300. But this sample size is calculated considering six spokescharacters’ conditions only. So, adding 46*2 = 92 for the recycling logo group, the final sample adds to 392. Taking the larger value out of the two (i.e., from 366 and 392), the final sample size required was 392.

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3.5.2 Justification for sampling strategy This study used nonprobability (i.e., convenience) sampling to recruit participants online using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of brand spokescharacter’s appeal, attractiveness, and expertise on consumers’ intention to recycle, mediated through spokescharacter’s trustworthiness, relevancy, and affective attitude towards recycling. Accordingly, the focus of this study was to understand the relationship between the variables, and not on variables per se. For instance, the researcher of this study did not want to find the mean intention to recycle or mean spokescharacter’s appeal of different spokescharacters from the sample and generalize it to the U.S. population; rather the researcher wanted to explore the relationship between spokescharacter’s appeal, expertise, and attractiveness and recycling intentions. Blair and Zinkhan (2006) described why the use of non-probability samples in academic research is justified to achieve advancement of knowledge. They argued that scholars’ main focus of research is to study relationships between variables and not to study individual variables per se. If the sample is diverse, a non-probability sample can also work well to establish relationships between variables of a study and can be generalized over the population of interest.

Another point raised by Blair and Zinkhan (2006) is that researchers conduct confirmatory research, and not inferential ones. That is, the research hypotheses are guided by existing theories and the researchers know about the relationship before they conduct the research. As theories are universally valid across the population, so would be the findings. Finally, replication studies lead to empirical generalization in case of academic research; that is, if findings from a particular study are interesting and novel, other researchers tend to replicate the studies in different contexts to establish the generalizability of the results (Blair & Zinkhan, 2006). This also enables a study to achieve external validity. Therefore, the use of a nonprobability (convenience) sample for this study is seen as appropriate.

3.5.3 Participants Participants for this study were recruited by using the Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform. Social science researchers have used this platform to conduct research since its launch in 2005 (Buhrmester et al., 2018). Further, Chandler and Shapiro (2016) reported that the number of research papers using data from MTurk in

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social science journals with an impact factor greater than 2.5 jumped from less than 50 in 2011 to more than 500 in the year 2015. One of the biggest advantages of using MTurk to recruit participants for research is access to large samples that are demographically more diverse than typical undergraduate students’ populations (Buhrmester et al., 2016; Casler et al., 2013). However, it is to be noted that even though the participant pool is majorly American, it is not representative of the U.S. population (Arditte et al., 2016). On the other hand, Paolacci et al. (2010) reported that the MTurk population is at least as representative of the U.S. population as traditional subject pools.

Other advantages of using MTurk for participant recruitments are faster collection of data at a fraction of a cost as compared to other channels such as lab studies or online platforms like Qualtrics (Buhrmester et al., 2018). Further, inattention of participants in online studies can be a major cause of concern for data quality. However, studies have reported that MTurk participants’ attention levels are equal to or even better than undergraduate participants’ attention (Chandler & Shapiro, 2016). Another issue with online studies is attrition due to the relative ease with which participants can leave the study, hence researchers must address this problem proactively (Horton et al., 2011; Zhou & Fishbach, 2016). One effective way to deal with this issue is to communicate the accurate time needed to complete the study to participants in advance, so that they are mentally prepared (Chandler & Shapiro, 2016).

This study used this recommendation and communicated the time to complete the questionnaire beforehand. It is further reported that data collected online is not of inferior quality to that collected from traditional methods (Gosling et al., 2004). Participants recruited through MTurk may never interact face-to face with experimenters and do not even know that they are part of an experiment. This reduces experimenter bias and participant cross-talks (Edlund et al., 2009).

3.6 INSTRUMENTS

3.6.1 Pre-test and main study questionnaire The pre-test and main study questionnaire were developed using the Qualtrics platform. The final versions used in the study are available in Appendix B and C.

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3.6.2 Versions of recycling message As the study involved seven treatment groups and one control group, seven versions of recycling messages were developed for this study. The layout and contents of the messages are shown in Figure 3.2. The design layout and textual information remained the same across all the versions of the message, and only the visual image (i.e., type of spokescharacter or recycling logo) was varied. So, in one version of the message, one type of animal spokescharacter was used, in the other a mythical one and so on.

3.6.3 Justification for recycling message’s design There are two main elements considered in the design of the recycling message: visual image and textual information. As explained earlier, visual image (i.e., spokescharacter or recycling logo) for each version of the message was selected using a pre-test. Following the process used by Kronrod et al. (2012), five recycling slogans were selected from the website https://www.thinkslogans.com/ as a list of options. Table 3.4 lists these slogans.

Table 3.4 Different recycling slogans pre-tested with Marketing HDR students

S.No. Recycling slogan tested 1. Recycle your trash or trash your earth 2. Paper, bottles, cans, plastic…. Recycle them all, it is fantastic! 3. Recycle today for a better tomorrow 4. You will produce about 127, 604 pounds of garbage in your lifetime. Recycle. 5. You cannot change the past, but you can change the future, always remember to recycle!

Higher degree research (HDR) students from the QUT Business School were asked to provide their opinion on the suitability of the slogan to be used for this study (see Figure 3.3). Most of them selected option no. 3 (i.e., Recycle today for a better tomorrow) citing it as short, simple, easy to understand as compared to others. Hence this slogan was used in the final recycling message. The message was designed by a professional photoshop designer based in India.

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Figure 3.3 Pre-testing of recycling slogans with Marketing HDRs at QUT Business School

Also, it is reported that message frames (highlighting either gain or loss or positive or negative outcome) have a significant impact on advertising outcomes (Loroz, 2007; Qin & Brown, 2007). In environmental marketing, gain-framed messages highlight the benefits of adopting green behaviour, and loss-making messages highlight the potential loss or cost of not undertaking green behaviours. Past studies have also found that in general, positively framed messages (i.e., those highlighting benefits of green behaviours) are more effective in developing favourable attitudes towards recycling and other ecological activities (Mina Okada & Mais, 2010; Obermiller, 1995). This finding also supported the selection of the recycling slogan labelled as option no. 3 as it highlights the gain (i.e., a better tomorrow) of engaging in recycling.

3.6.4 Addressing the problem of participants’ inattention Attention checks are necessary, particularly in online questionnaires to ensure a reasonable quality of data. Two questions were added to ensure that participants were attentive while responding to the online questionnaire. Those participants who failed to answer the attention check questions correctly were excluded from the data analysis. Chapter 4 describes in detail the results of attention checks and the number of responses removed considering those checks. An attention request was also included in the beginning of the survey, which is reproduced below. Participants then selected the agree button and proceeded with answering the questions. This process may have garnered attention among the participants.

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‘We are conducting an academic study and the findings of this project will be used to make some important decisions. Therefore, we request you to pay full, undivided attention and answer the survey with full honesty. At this point, please locate a quiet place, switch off music or TV, or refrain from doing any other activities. Are you ready to respond to the survey?’

3.6.5 Variables included in the questionnaire This study used fifteen variables and Table 3.5 and Table 3.6 present the sources from which they were adapted for this study.

Table 3.5 Variables used in this study

Type of Variable name Study from which it is taken/adapted variable Warm-up Environmental Nameghi and Shadi (2013) question* attitude Control Past recycling Carrus et al. (2008), Knussen and Yule (2008) variables behaviour Perceived Knussen and Yule (2008) behavioural control towards recycling Subjective norms Knussen and Yule (2008) towards recycling Moderator Recycling Zaichkowsky (1985) Involvement Independent Spokescharacter’s See Table 3.6 variables appeal Spokescharacter’s Ohanian (1990) expertise Spokescharacter’s Ohanian (1990) attractiveness Mediating Spokescharacter’s Garretson and Niedrich (2004) variables relevancy Spokescharacter’s Ohanian (1990) trustworthiness Affective attitude Eisend and Langner (2010) towards recycling Dependent Recycling intention Wang et al. (2017) variable * Question on environmental attitudes was used as a warm-up question to garner attention of participants

Table 3.6 lists the studies from which variables for spokescharacter’s appeal construct were taken.

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Table 3.6 Past studies for sourcing variables for spokescharacter’s appeal construct

Variable name Study from which it is taken/adapted

Liking Callcott and Alvey (1991) Nostalgia Garretson and Niedrich (2004) Cuteness Wang et al. (2017) Humour Jäger and Eisend (2013) Appealing Lunardo et al. (2015)

3.7 DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS PROCEDURE

3.7.1 Data collection and Analysis procedure The online questionnaire’s link was posted on Amazon’s MTurk platform and MTurkers who are paid participants can view the study’s description and participate in the study at their will. Each MTurker who agreed to participate in the study was randomly assigned to one of the experimental group conditions, which varied in terms of the version of recycling message used (see Figure 3.2). Data was also collected from a control group separately. Figure 3.4. demonstrates the sequence of data collection through the questionnaire.

Figure 3.4 Sequence of data collection through questionnaire

Data collection Exposure to Data collection Collection of on control recycling on dependent and participants’ variables message other variables demographic data

3.7.2 Data collection and Analysis procedure Data was processed and analysed using SPSS v26 and SPSS Amos v26. Table 3.7 describes the data analysis procedures that were used in this study.

Table 3.7 Data analysis procedures used in this study

Particulars Details Descriptive statistics • Data on participants’ demographic variables was analysed using SPSS v26.0. • Descriptive statistics for spokescharacter’s attributes and dependent variables was calculated using SPSS v26.0. • Data examination that includes missing data treatment, outlier analysis, and key assumptions for multivariate analysis was performed using SPSS v26.0.

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Multivariate analysis • Dependent variables were cognitive attitude towards of covariance recycling, affective attitude towards recycling, and recycling (MANCOVA) intentions. • Covariates were past recycling behaviour, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control. • Scores on dependent variables across eight experimental groups were compared to see whether significant differences exist between them. Structural Equation • The conceptual model was analysed using the structural Modelling equation modelling technique using merged data from six spokescharacters’ conditions. Individual hypotheses were tested, and findings were reported.

3.8 ETHICS CONSIDERATION

Prior to the commencement of data collection, this study obtained ethics approval from the QUT Human Research Ethics Committee (approval no. 2000000438). The ethics approval process at QUT is quite stringent and covers potential risks associated with the study, recruitment process, justification for data collection, questionnaire, and confidentiality of the responses. This study has been qualified as low-risk research involving human participation.

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Chapter 4: Data analysis and Results

4.1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter outlines the steps taken to analyse the data collected through online survey. It further outlines the different statistical techniques used and the findings thereof. Section 4.2 illustrates how attention checks were performed to identify inattentive respondents resulting in the removal of responses that failed attention checks from further analysis. Section 4.3 reports the descriptive statistics of variables used in the study. Section 4.4 discusses handling missing data, performing outlier analysis, and testing multivariate test assumptions in detail. The results of EFA and MANCOVA are presented in Section 4.5 and 4.6, respectively. Confirmatory factor analysis is discussed next in section 4.7. Section 4.8 presents the testing of hypotheses using structural equation modelling. Finally, section 4.9 presents the conclusions.

4.2 ATTENTION CHECKS

As data for this research study was collected online, following best practices, two attention check questions were inserted in the main questionnaire (Meade & Craig, 2012). The first attention check was inserted in between the various spokescharacter’s attributes to be answered by the participants (see questionnaire in Appendix C). It instructed the participant to select the ‘Agree’ option on a seven-point scale (ranging from ‘Strongly Disagree’ to ‘Strongly Agree’). Similarly, the second attention check was inserted between multiple items regarding spokescharacter’s relevancy as endorser for recycling causes. Here, participants were instructed to select ‘Somewhat Agree’ on a seven-point scale (ranging from ‘Strongly Disagree’ to ‘Strongly Agree’).

As there were six spokescharacter conditions with attention checks, each one was checked separately for all responses that failed attention checks. The condition with the recycling logo and the control group did not have attention check questions as the length of the questionnaire under these two conditions was quite short. Therefore, it did not make sense to add attention checks (see questionnaire in Appendix C). Condition-wise result of attention checks are reported in Table 4.1.

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Table 4.1 Condition-wise deletion of responses after attention check

Condition Total No. of first No. of No. of Final responses attention second responses sample check attention deleted size failure check achieved failure Tony the Tiger 59 5 1 6 53 Coco the 59 3 2 5 54 Monkey Mr. Clean 61 3 3 5 56 Gnome 62 2 3 4 58 Michelin Man 61 2 1 3 58 M&M Red 57 3 2 4 53 Total 359 18 12 27 332

A total of 27 cases were deleted as a result of attention check failure. Therefore, after deleting these responses, a sample of 332 remained with six spokescharacters’ conditions. Adding 61 cases of recycling logo condition and 75 from the control group, a final sample of 468 was achieved. This sample was used for conducting basic descriptive analysis, as described in the next section.

4.3 DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS

In this section, descriptive statistics of demographic variables are presented. Even though descriptive statistics analysis is not directly related to answering research questions of this study, they are presented in this section for describing data to the reader. Table 4.2 presents the total sample size achieved condition wise.

Table 4.2 Final sample size for descriptive statistics – by group

Cumulative Condition type N Percent Percent Control Group 75 16.0 16.0 Recycling Logo 61 13.0 29.1 Gnome 58 12.4 41.5 Michelin Man 58 12.4 53.8 Mr. Clean 56 12.0 65.8 Coco the Monkey 54 11.5 77.4 Tony the Tiger 53 11.3 88.7 M&M Red 53 11.3 100.0 Total 468 100.0

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4.3.1 Descriptive statistics for participants’ demographic variables Data on the following demographic variables were collected: participant’s age, participant’s gender, participant’s state of residence in U.S, participant’s education level, and participant’s income level. Apart from age (which was a scale variable), all other variables were either nominal or ordinal in nature. Demographically, the participants represented a diverse mix with a well-distributed age across the sample. Gender distribution was also fairly balanced, and participants were from different income and education levels. This heterogeneous sample ensured that the findings are more representative of the underlying population, unlike undergraduate samples, which generally do not represent an entire underlying population.

Demographic variable wise statistics are presented next.

Participants’ age The mean age of participants was 40.2 years [ S.D =11.13, min=18 years and max=76 years] with a median age of 38 years. Age was fairly distributed in the sample (Appendix D-a). A total of three entries were missing (i.e., 0.64% of the sample size) which did not pose a major problem as the missing values were less than 5% (Hair et al., 2014). Other demographic variables had two missing values each, which represented 0.43% of the total sample size and posed no major issues for data analysis. One-way independent samples, ANOVA results, showed that the eight experiment groups did not differ on participants’ age [F statistic=.659, p=.707].

Participants’ gender, education, and income distribution The sample was nearly balanced in terms of gender distribution, with 56.7% of male and 42.9% female participants (see Table 4.3 & Appendix D-b). A non- significant chi-square result [Pearson Chi-Square = 6.787, p = .451] indicated that groups did not differ in terms of gender-wise participant composition. As indicated in Table 4.4., education-wise, almost two-third of the participants had either bachelor’s or master’s degrees. Further, as indicated in Table 4.5, a majority of the participants earned between USD 45,000 and 139,999.

Table 4.3 Gender-wise count of participants

Cumulative Frequency Percent Percent Valid Male 264 56.4 56.7

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Female 200 42.7 99.6 Other 1 .2 99.8 Prefer not to 1 .2 100.0 answer Total 466 99.6 Missing System 2 .4 Total 468 100.0

Table 4.4 Education-wise count of participants

Cumulative Frequency Percent Percent Valid Bachelor's degree in 226 48.3 48.5 college Master's degree 79 16.9 65.5 Associate degree in 52 11.1 76.6 college Some college but no 48 10.3 86.9 degree High school graduate 47 10.0 97.0 Professional degree 8 1.7 98.7 Doctoral degree 5 1.1 99.8 Less than high school 1 .2 100.0 Total 466 99.6 Missing System 2 .4 Total 468 100.0

Table 4.5 Income-wise count of participants

Cumulative Frequency Percent Percent Valid $45,000 - $139,999 246 52.6 52.8 $20,000 - $44,999 131 28.0 80.9 Less than $20,000 39 8.3 89.3 $150,000 - 17 3.6 92.9 $199,999 $140,000 - 15 3.2 96.1 $149,999 $200,000+ 11 2.4 98.5 Prefer not to 7 1.5 100.0 answer Total 466 99.6 Missing System 2 .4 Total 468 100.0

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Chi-square tests for income and education-wise distribution of participants across conditions (cell counts <5 for more than 20% of cells hence Likelihood Ratio also reported) found non-significant results for income [Pearson chi-square value = 46.804, p= .282 and Likelihood Ratio = 49.889, p=.188]. However, for education, chi- square value was significant at .05 level [ Pearson chi-square = 81.857, p= .002 and Likelihood Ratio =88.804, p=.000]. Hence, the eight groups differed on participants’ educational levels.

4.3.2 Descriptive statistics for control variables Control variables are those variables which are not included in the study’s model but can have an influence on the dependent variable(s) (Huck, 2012). Therefore, to capture the influence of independent variables (i.e., spokescharacter’s attributes) on dependent variables (i.e., recycling attitudes and recycling intention), it was desirable to control for the effect of variables that were not part of the study’s model. As indicated in Table 4.6., the following were the control variables for which data was collected in this study as they are expected to influence recycling intentions of consumers: past recycling behaviour, perceived behavioural control towards recycling, and subjective norms towards recycling.

Table 4.6 Control variables for this study

Table 4.6 presents the descriptive statistics for the control variables. As is evident from the table, participants had fairly high subjective norms [Mean =5.61, SD = 1.05, Median = 5.67] and perceived behavioural control towards recycling [Mean =5.53, SD = 1.46, Median = 6.00] indicating that the opinion of their social connections (which include family, friends and close others) regarding recycling

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mattered to them and they did not find engaging in recycling challenging. Past recycling behaviour scores were comparatively lower than other variables [Mean =5.01, SD = 1.55, Median = 5.50], but still moderately high. They also found recycling quite an easy task because in response to the statement, ‘it will be easy for me to engage in recycling during the next 4 weeks” participants agreed with a mean score of 5.6 out of 7. This may be due to the fact that participants were drawn from a developed country like the U.S with adequate recycling collection infrastructure.

Since this study planned to include three control variables in MANCOVA, it was necessary to check the correlations between them. A low correlation between multiple control variables is desirable to justify inclusion of all of them (Huck, 2012). Since data was non-normal in distribution, Kendall’s tau_b correlation coefficient was reported instead of Pearson’s coefficient of correlation (Allen et al., 2019). All correlations were significant at .01 level, and the highest correlation was between perceived behavioural control and past recycling behaviour (Appendix D-c). This was expected, as consumers who have higher recycling experience will find more behavioural control over it. The correlation coefficients indicated medium correlation between the control variables (Cohen, 1988), so it was considered appropriate to include all three control variables in MANCOVA.

One-way ANOVA results also revealed that the eight groups did not differ in terms of their scores on perceived behavioural control, and subjective norms towards recycling. However, a marginal difference was observed between scores on past recycling behaviour between ‘Mr. Clean’ group and the control group [ x̄ Control group = 2 5.49, x̄ Mr.Clean = 4.62, F = 2.06, p= .046, ηp =.032, observed power = .796]. However, since effect size was small (Huck, 2012), it was not a matter of concern.

4.3.3 Descriptive statistics for independent, mediating, and dependent variables The descriptive statistics for all the remaining variables are presented next. The sample size for spokescharacter’s related variables was 332, as only six spokescharacters’ conditions have been used for presenting the descriptive statistics.

Spokescharacter’s familiarity, liking, cuteness, humour, and nostalgia The mean familiarity of brand spokescharacters used in this study was quite high among participants [ M=5.67, SD = 1.86, Median =6.00]. However, the familiarity levels varied significantly across the different brand spokescharacters [ x̄ M&M character

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=6.64, SD= .710; x̄ Coco Monkey = 3.54, SD =2.36] with one-way ANOVA results showing significant differences in familiarity levels [F statistics = 37.22, p = .000]. M&M Red was most familiar and Coco the Monkey the least familiar amongst participants (Appendix D-d).

However, this study found that familiarity with spokescharacters had marginal effect on its liking (i.e., Kendall’s tau_b correlation coefficient = .22, p<.01) and trustworthiness (Kendall’s tau_b correlation coefficient = .11, p<.05) and it had no relation with relevancy (Kendall’s tau_b correlation coefficient = .07, n.s.) for recycling cause.

Table 4.7 shows that overall, the brand spokescharacters were considered likable [x̄ =5.48, SD =1.05, Median =6.00], cute [x̄ =5.24, SD =1.34, Median =5.00], and appealing [x̄ =5.40, SD =1.31, Median =6.00]. However, for humour [x̄ =4.68, SD =1.45, Median =5.00] and nostalgia [x̄ =4.58, SD =1.70, Median =5.00] scores were comparatively on the lower side. The one-way ANOVA results show that there was a significant difference between spokescharacters’ nostalgia, cuteness, and humour. However, no significant difference in spokescharacter’s liking and appeal was found (Appendix D-e). That is, all the spokescharacters used in the study were perceived equally likable and appealing to the participants. The nostalgia engendered was different across the spokescharacters, and this was expected as some of the spokescharacters originated decades and even a century ago (e.g., Tony the Tiger, Michelin Man) and some were recent ones (e.g., Gnome, M&M spokescandies). Similarly, the humour and cuteness levels differed due to the physical appearance of the character and its personality traits as depicted in the advertising.

Table 4.7 Mean scores on spokescharacter attributes

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Spokescharacter appeal significantly correlated with all other attributes (Appendix D-f). A simple regression analysis showed that when a spokescharacter’s liking, nostalgia, cuteness, and humour predicted its appeal, the model fitted the data well [F statistics =201.51, p=.000], and 70.8% of the variance (adjusted R2 = .708) in spokescharacter’s appeal can be explained by all the predictors. All variables were significant predictors (p <.001) of appeal, with liking (standardized β =.32) and cuteness (standardized β=.41) having more effect on appeal than humour (standardized β=.16) and nostalgia (standardized β=.12).

To examine the influence of gender and/or age on nostalgia primed by spokescharacters, a simple ANOVA was conducted with gender as a factor and no significant difference between mean nostalgia score of males and females was reported. For checking age effects, a categorical age variable was created with four subgroups (‘less than and equal to 30 years’, ‘31-38 years’, ‘39-50 years’ and ‘above 50 years’; 38 years was median age). Kendall’s tau_b correlation coefficient between nostalgia and appeal was separately calculated for four age groups and its values in ascending order of age groups were .441, .467, .507, and .441 (for all values p <.01).

As evident, there was marginal difference between the correlation coefficients across the groups and no influence of age on nostalgia and appeal relationship is discernible. That is, irrespective of participants’ age or gender, nostalgia was a comparatively weak predictor of spokescharacter’s appeal. This finding is similar to the one reported by Holbrook (1993, Study 1) who found no age effect on nostalgia. These findings provided initial support to the study’s hypothesis that spokescharacter’s appeal may arise due to its liking, cuteness, nostalgia, and humour.

Spokescharacters’ perceived trustworthiness, attractiveness, expertise, and relevancy Spokescharacters were perceived as highly trustworthy [Mean = 5.75, SD = 1.09, Median =6.00], moderately expert [Mean = 5.07, SD = 1.45, Median =5.40], and low on attractiveness dimension [Mean = 4.20, SD = 1.30, Median =4.00]. Also, they were considered marginally relevant as endorsers for the recycling cause (Mean = 4.63, SD= 1.70, Median =5.0). The mean for relevancy was significantly higher than scale mid- point value of 4.0 (t value =6.795, p=.000), indicating that participants considered them somewhat relevant as endorsers for recycling (Appendix D- g).

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A one-way ANOVA test showed that while there was no significant difference between spokescharacters on trustworthiness [F statistics =0.575, p=.719] and attractiveness [F statistics =1.072, p=.375] dimensions, significant difference on 2 expertise dimension was found [F statistics =6.417, p=.000, ηp = .09, power = .997]. Tukey’s HSD post hoc test revealed that significant differences existed between the mean expertise score of Mr. Clean (x̄ = 5.88) and Tony the Tiger (x̄ = 4.61), Coco Monkey (x̄ = 4.05), and M&M character (x̄ = 4.76). Depiction of Mr. Clean as a cleaning expert in advertisements over the years may have resulted in his perceived high expertise score. Further, there were significant differences between relevancy scores across the spokescharacters [F statistics =3.42, p=.005]. Tukey’s HSD post hoc test revealed that Mr. Clean (x̄ = 5.26) was considered more relevant as an endorser for the recycling cause than Gnome (x̄ = 4.28) and M&M Red (x̄ = 4.15), but not as compared to Tony the Tiger (x̄ = 4.60), Coco the Monkey (x̄ = 4.55) and Michelin Man (x̄ = 4.93) (Appendix E).

With regards to relevancy as an endorser for a recycling cause, participants only somewhat agreed with the characters being used as endorsers in the shown recycling message and did not consider the anthropomorphized spokescharacters used in the study as a relevant endorser (highest mean score of 5.38 out of 7 for Mr. Clean and lowest of 4.24 by M&M Red). However, the average score on relevancy was significantly above the mid-point (neutral) of the seven-point scale used (Mean =4.7, t value= 7.53, p=.000) indicating an inclination towards affirmation among participants. One reason for a low relevancy score of these characters can be that they have been created specifically for a single product and have been endorsing the same ever since their origination. Therefore, participants, on seeing them briefly (20 sec) and only once in a recycling message, immediately could not establish their suitability as endorsers for recycling. Probably, repeated use of these characters with the cause may enhance their relevancy as a recycling cause endorser. Sheehan (2020) found that participants in their study rated spokescharacters such as Hello Kitty and Ms. Piggy as moderately relevant (range of mean was 4.8 to 5.06 on a 7-point scale) for endorsing luxury handbags even when they know that these characters do not use them. On a similar note, this study found brand spokescharacters as a moderately relevant endorser for environmental causes, even though participants are aware that they may not be directly affected by environmental issues.

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Participants’ mean recycling attitudes and intentions For recycling attitudes and intention, the sample size of 468 was used for descriptive statistics as recycling logo and control groups provided data on these variables.

Overall, participants’ attitudes towards recycling were quite high [for affective attitude towards recycling (Mean =5.70, SD = 1.13, Median = 6.00) and cognitive attitude towards recycling (Mean =6.26, SD = 0.88, Median = 6.60)]. However, the recycling intention was moderate (Mean =5.22, SD = 1.49, Median = 5.33] (Appendix D-h). When only six spokescharacters’ group mean was calculated, the values were:

Mean affective attitude =5.81, SD = 1.05, Median = 6.00; Mean cognitive attitude =6.41, SD =

0.81, Median = 6.8; and Mean recycling intention =5.26, SD = 1.53, Median = 5.67.

The Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests for normality (see Appendix D-i) indicate that the dependent variables (i.e., cognitive and affective attitude towards recycling and recycling intentions) were not normally distributed. Therefore, data transformations were undertaken before conducting MANCOVA, as normal distribution of data is a key assumption for multivariate analysis (Hair et al., 2014).

A gender-wise difference across affective and cognitive attitude towards recycling, and recycling intention was observed (Appendix D-j). Independent samples t-test results revealed that while affective and cognitive attitudes differed between male and female participants [for affective attitude, Mean female= 5.99, SD=1.07; Mean male= 5.58, SD=1.15; t = -3.24, p=.001, and for cognitive attitude, Mean female= 6.56,

SD=0.75; Mean male= 6.21, SD=0.94; t = -3.78, p=.000], there was no significant difference between recycling intentions [Mean female= 5.30, SD=1.60; Mean male= 5.11, SD=1.57; t = -1.05, p=.294].

The overall affective and cognitive attitude towards recycling among participants were high, while recycling intentions were moderately high. Even the scores of control group participants were high on all dependent variables. One possible reason for high scores on recycling attitudes and intentions of the control group can be the high media coverage given to environmental issues and events like climate strike and popularity of environmental activists like Greta Thunberg. The gender-wise comparison of recycling attitude and intentions across eight groups suggest that while female participants had a significantly higher affective and cognitive attitude towards

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recycling, there was no significant difference for recycling intentions across gender. In past studies, women have been found to be more environmentally concerned than men (Hunter et al., 2004; Oztekin et al., 2017). Further, the influence of spokescharacters only on attitudes but not on intention is not surprising, given that some past studies have reported that celebrity endorsement positively influences attitudes but not intentions (Kamins, 1990; Till & Busler, 2000).

4.3.4 Reliability analysis for scale items Table 4.8 report the internal consistency, or the reliability of the scale items used to measure different variables in the study. As the table shows, all variables had a Cronbach’s alpha value above the minimum required value of 0.7 (Hair et al., 2014).

Table 4.8 Cronbach’s Alpha for all variables measured by multiple items in this study

No. of items used Cronbach’s Variable name to measure alpha variable Spokescharacter’s nostalgia 4 .96 Spokescharacter’s humour 3 .93 Spokescharacter’s appeal 5 .86 Spokescharacter’s trustworthiness 5 .95 Spokescharacter’s attractiveness 5 .88 Spokescharacter’s expertise 5 .96 Spokescharacter’s relevancy 5 .97 Recycling involvement 2 .84 Past recycling behaviour 2 .90 Perceived behavioural control 2 .92 towards recycling Subjective norms towards 3 .88 recycling Affective attitude towards 3 .84 recycling Cognitive attitude towards 5 .93 recycling Recycling intention 3 .89

4.4 DATA EXAMINATION

Hair et al. (2014) suggested three-step data examination before multivariate analysis can be conducted. These are missing data treatment, outlier analysis, and checking multivariate analysis assumptions. These three steps were conducted and are reported in the following sections.

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4.4.1 Missing data treatment As reported in the previous sections, missing data on demographic variables such as age, education, and income were less than 5%, therefore, no missing data treatment was required (Hair et al., 2014). The next section reports the outlier analysis.

4.4.2 Outlier analysis Outliers are defined as observations with a “unique combination of characteristics identifiable as distinctly different from other observations” (Hair et al., 2014, p. 62). This means that an observation having an unusually low or high value in relation to other observations qualifies as an outlier. Outliers can distort empirical findings and may represent a case not belonging to the population from which the researcher intended to draw and make inferences (Hair et al., 2014).

The boxplots of different variables demonstrate that there were multiple outliers associated with each variable (Appendix D-k). Also, since the multivariate analysis (i.e., MANCOVA and SEM) in this study used more than two variables, it was better to conduct multivariate outlier analysis using the Mahalanobis D2 distance measure, which provides multivariate assessment of each variable across a set of observations (Hair et al., 2014).

Accordingly, two multivariate outlier analyses were conducted, one for MANCOVA in which data from all eight conditions were used (n=468) and another in which data from six spokescharacter conditions were used (n=332) as SEM analysis was conducted using six spokescharacter conditions data only. Results of the two analyses are presented next.

Multivariate outlier analysis with N = 468 for MANCOVA For identifying multivariate outliers, linear regression was used with all variables as predictors and arbitrarily setting Random ID of participants as the dependent variable, as the purpose of running this regression was to get the Mahalanobis D2 distance as the output. Descriptive statistics of Mahalanobis D2 distance was used (i.e., stem-and-leaf plot to identify number of extreme values, and box plot to reveal the exact case numbers of outliers) to identify a total of 19 outliers (see Appendix F) which were deleted (i.e., 4% of the data set). Therefore, for MANCOVA analysis, 449 cases (468-19 = 449) remained.

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Multivariate outlier analysis with N=332 for SEM The same process as earlier was followed for identifying outliers for SEM analysis. A total of 13 outliers were identified (see Appendix F) and deleted (i.e., 3.91% of the total data set). Therefore, the final data set left for SEM analysis was 319 (332- 13 = 319).

4.4.3 Testing the assumptions of multivariate analysis (MANCOVA) Huck (2012) outlined four key assumptions about the sample and underlying population, which must be met before comparison of means can be conducted using MANOVA analysis, otherwise inferences drawn from the results may be invalid. These four assumptions and their fulfilment for this research is discussed next.

1. Randomness: This assumption states that the sample used for the study must be a random subset of the population it represents. For the present study, the researcher posted the study link on Amazon’s MTurk platform and any of the qualified MTurkers (i.e., they had equal chance to be included in the sample) could opt to participate after reading the study’s description. Therefore, it can be assumed that the sample is drawn randomly from the sampling frame (note: MTurkers were located in U.S. and are at least 18 years old). 2. Independence of observations: This assumption states that the responses of one participant must not influence the way other participants respond, i.e., there is no interaction between the participants from different groups. As this study was conducted online and MTurkers can register their responses from any location, chances of influencing intergroup participants’ responses were negligible. 3. Normal distribution of dependent variable: This assumption states that the dependent variables must be normally distributed in all groups, and hence the population. If this assumption does not hold, data transformations are required (Hair et al., 2014). The data was not normally distributed; hence data transformations were applied, which is discussed later. 4. Equal variance assumption: This assumption states that equal variance relative to the dependent variable exists in all the comparative groups, and hence in the population. Levene’s test was used to check the equal variance assumption.

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Levene’s test was conducted before data transformations to check whether the equal variation assumption across the groups holds. The test revealed that equal variance assumption holds for affective attitude and cognitive attitude but not for recycling intentions [Levene statistic affective attitude = 1.906, p= .067; Levene statistic cognitive attitude = .135, p= .996; Levene statistic recycling intention = 2.83, p= .007]. Hence, this assumption was partially met.

In addition to the four assumptions for MANOVA, additional assumptions are to be met before conducting MANCOVA as covariates are included. Huck (2012) detailed these assumptions as follows:

5. A covariate must be correlated with dependent variables (i.e., correlation coefficient greater than absolute value of 0.2). 6. If there are multiple covariates, they must not be highly correlated with each other (i.e., r <0.5). 7. Independent variables should not affect the covariate(s). 8. Correlation between covariate and dependent variable (i.e., homogeneity of regression slopes) is the same within each of the comparison group samples and hence population. 9. Covariates and dependent variables should have linear relationships.

For checking assumption 5 and 6, the correlation coefficients (i.e., Kendall’s tau_b) between dependent variables and covariates were calculated and results are presented in Appendix D-l.

All three covariates have correlations higher than 0.2 with the three dependent variables. Further, it can be seen that the three covariates are moderately correlated to each other (r < 0.5). For assumption 7, independent variables in this study were spokescharacter attributes. Data on covariates were collected before exposing participants to the recycling message with spokescharacters as endorser. Hence this assumption was met. For assumption 8, following the procedure described by Grande (2016), it was found that this assumption was partially met. For assumption 9, scatter plots were analysed to check the linearity assumption (see Appendix G). Visual inspection of the scatter plots revealed that the covariates and dependent variables are not linearly related to each other perfectly, hence this assumption was not fully met.

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As dependent variables (i.e., affective attitude towards recycling, cognitive attitude towards recycling, and recycling intention) were not normally distributed, data transformations were required before data can be analysed using MANCOVA. Hair et al. (2014, p. 69) mentions that “if the variation from the normal distribution is sufficiently large, all resulting statistical tests are invalid, because normality is required to use the F and t-statistics.” The analysis was done using both non-normal, original data and transformed data to see if any difference in findings occurred.

As suggested by Hair et al. (2014), when data is negatively skewed, squared or cubed transformations can make the data less non-normal. Following this recommendation, all three dependent variables were transformed using both squared and cubed transformations.

It was found that these transformations reduced the negative skewness in dependent variables to a large extent, as shown in Appendix D-m.

However, the distributions were still not normal. Based on the skewness and kurtosis values of transformed variables, it was decided to use cubed cognitive attitude, squared affective attitude and squared recycling intention variables for conducting MANCOVA analysis.

4.5 EXPLORATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS (EFA)

4.5.1 Introduction • In order to answer RQ1 of this study, what are the key constituents that form the appeal of anthropomorphized spokescharacters, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was performed. Hair et al. (2014, p. 92) defined factor analysis as “an interdependence technique whose primary purpose is to define the underlying structure among the variables in the analysis”. Sometimes, many variables are required to conduct different types of statistical analysis and researchers may find difficult to handle them at individual levels. One of the main applications of factor analysis is to create a new composite measure (i.e., construct), which can represent a group of variables, hence reducing the variables a researcher has to deal with. It is achieved by analysing a group of variables that the researcher thinks are correlated with each other, and may represent a single factor (i.e., construct).

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Since anthropomorphized spokescharacter’s appeal is a new construct, which was proposed by the present study, it was necessary to first identify variables that may constitute appeal of the anthropomorphized characters and then to conduct an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to reveal the underlying factor structure of the appeal construct. This procedure is similar to the one followed by Ohanian (1990) for exploring dimensions of source effectiveness. As outlined in Chapter 2, it was hypothesized that the spokescharacter’s cuteness, nostalgia, humour, and liking will constitute its appeal. The variable appealing was also added and if all the variables load on a single factor along with the appealing variable, it will provide initial support to the hypothesis that these variables constitute spokescharacter’s appeal (Hair et al., 2014).

The construct the present study attempts to define is anthropomorphized spokescharacter’s appeal, which may not be defined completely by a single measure (appeal is an abstract term like attitude or job satisfaction, which can be best measured by multiple items or measures). In fact, a construct can have multiple dimensions also, as has source effectiveness (Ohanian, 1990). Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) is the technique used by researchers to uncover the underlying factor structure of a construct not explored before. In this study, since spokescharacter’s appeal was a new construct, EFA was used. For conducting EFA, the stepwise process outlined by Hair et al. (2014) was followed and will be outlined next. Specifically, the following hypothesis was tested using EFA:

H1: The appeal of brand spokescharacter will consists of its liking, cuteness, humour, and nostalgia.

4.5.2 Assumptions of EFA The EFA works by analysing a correlation matrix, hence it is required that variables used must be metric in nature. In this study, this requirement was met. Another requirement is regarding the number of variables to be included for factor analysis. Hair et al. (2014) recommended at least five variables per factor to be included, which was also met in this study. With regards to the sample size to be used for factor analysis, a minimum sample of 100 or 20 cases per variable is recommended by (Hair et al., 2014). In this study, the sample size requirement was met. The assumptions in factor analysis are more conceptual than statistical, i.e., the variables used in the analysis must have conceptual justification to be included. As theoretical

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justification was offered for variables’ inclusion (see Chapter 2), this assumption was met.

Homogeneity of the sample is also a requirement with respect to the underlying factor structure. In this study, appeal was the proposed factor, and as past research studies have shown that anthropomorphized spokescharacters appeal across age and gender (Phillips et al., 2019), it can be assumed that this assumption was met. Two tests, Bartlett test of sphericity and KMO measure of sampling adequacy, were used to quantify the degree of intercorrelations among the variables and appropriateness of factor analysis. A significant Bartlett test of sphericity is required, KMO measure of sampling adequacy should be above 0.5, and a value greater than 0.8 is considered excellent (Hair et al., 2014). These two measures will be checked while conducting the EFA using SPSS v26.0.

4.5.3 Number of factors to extract The first consideration is given to the conceptual foundation about the number of factors to be extracted. As no past research study has attempted to define spokescharacter’s appeal, the human celebrity’s appeal literature was reviewed, and it was found that Stever (1991) reported four factors comprising human celebrity appeal while Lunardo et al. (2015) described a single factor appeal construct. Hence, theoretically, it was expected that a single factor or multi-factor appeal construct may emerge. Turning to empirical evidence, Hair et al. (2014) have suggested certain criteria to decide on the number of factors to be extracted, which are discussed next.

1) Latent root criterion: According to this criterion, all factors with eigen values greater than 1 are to be retained. However, this criterion is most reliable when the number of variables is between 20 and 50. 2) Percentage of variance criterion: This criterion is about the total variance extracted by the factors to be retained. In social sciences, a minimum value of 60% is recommended, i.e., the researcher must include all factors till 60% explained variance is achieved. 3) Scree test criterion: Scree plots are used to decide the number of factors to be retained. The point at which the curve first begins to straighten out is considered to indicate the maximum number of factors to be extracted.

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Hair et al. (2014) concluded by saying that the number of factors to be retained must be guided more by conceptual rather than empirical bases.

4.5.4 Practical and statistical significance of factor loadings The following criteria are recommended by Hair et al. (2014) in evaluating practical and statistical significance of the factor loadings:

1) Factor loadings above an absolute value of 0.50 are considered practically significant. 2) Loadings exceeding an absolute value of 0.70 indicate a well-defined factor structure and this is the goal of any factor analysis. 3) For statistical significance with alpha = 0.05, power =80% a sample size of 332 would require factor loadings above 0.35.

Considering the above three points together, a factor loading of above 0.5 is desirable and acceptable in this study. Regarding communalities, a minimum value of 0.5 is required (Hair et al., 2014).

4.5.5 EFA Results As six spokescharacter conditions were used to collect data on variables used in the factor analysis and in each condition more than 50 cases were there, factor analysis was conducted six times to account for differences that may arise due to the spokescharacter used. Results show that in four out of six conditions, similar results were obtained, with all measures satisfied (see Table 4.9). In Tony the Tiger’s case, communality of humour was quite low (.257) and in Gnome’s case, communality of nostalgia was low (.278). However, in all cases, only a single factor emerged. Ohanian (1990) also conducted an EFA by taking two different celebrities (i.e., Madonna and John McEnroe) to analyse the factor structure of source effectiveness and found a similar factor structure in both cases, which she suggested gave credence to the stability of the factor structure. Therefore, it can be concluded that the factor structure is stable in this study, given the same factor structure was achieved in four different spokescharacter cases. Subsequently, a combined sample was used for factor analysis and the result is presented in Table 4.9. The output of the factor analysis conducted using SPSS v26.0 is described next.

Table 4.9 EFA results using Principal Component Analysis and Varimax rotation

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Spokes-character KMO Bartlett’s test Total variance All Number of condition measure of sphericity explained communalities factors of sample sig. value above 0.5? extracted adequacy Tony the Tiger .785 .000 62.4% Yes, except One humour (.257) Coco the Monkey .859 .000 74.2% Yes One Mr. Clean .819 .000 68.1% Yes One Gnome .809 .000 66.5% Yes, except One nostalgia (.278) Michelin Man .859 .000 72.7% Yes One M&M Red .872 .000 71.1% Yes One Combined data .853 .000 67.4% Yes One

Both Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) methods were used to extract factors to be compared with the results. The rotation method was also varied between orthogonal and oblique. Similar outcomes were achieved except for the variable nostalgia, for which the communality value dropped to .409 when Principal Axis Factoring was used. Table 4.10 represents a comparison of both methods.

Table 4.10 Result comparison for PCA and PAF

Parameter Principal Principal Axis Component Analysis Factoring (PCA) (PAF) KMO Measure of .853 .853 sampling adequacy Bartlett’s Test of .000 .000 Sphericity Minimum .534 (Nostalgia) .409 (Nostalgia) communality Total Variance 67.4% 60% explained Minimum factor .731 (Nostalgia) .639 (Nostalgia) loading No. of factors One One extracted

The reliability test returned satisfactory results, with a Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.865 (see Table 4.11). The output for Principal Component Analysis using Varimax rotation is presented next (see Table 4.12 and Figure 4.1).

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Table 4.11 Cronbach’s Alpha

Table 4.12 Factor analysis results using PCA and Varimax rotation

(a) KMO and Bartlett’s test

(b) Communalities

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(d) Factor loadings Figure 4.1 Scree Plot

Summary of EFA results using SPSS v26:

1) KMO Measure of Sampling adequacy was above 0.8, indicating excellent results. A significant Bartlett’s test of sphericity was also obtained, as required. 2) Communalities extracted were above the 0.5 threshold value. 3) The variance explained by the extracted factor was 67.45%, which was greater than the minimum threshold requirement of 60%.

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4) Only one factor with an Eigenvalue greater than one was extracted. Even though the scree plot suggested two factors, the Eigenvalue of the second factor was quite low (.606), hence was not accepted. 5) All factor loadings were above 0.5. Hence, factor loadings were practically and statistically significant.

Therefore, EFA results revealed the emergence of a single factor appeal construct for anthropomorphized spokescharacters comprising cuteness, humour, liking, nostalgia, and appealing variables. Therefore, H1 was supported.

4.5.6 Validation of factor analysis Hair et al. (2014) suggested that if the sample size permits, researcher should randomly split the dataset and check the stability of the factor structure across the two created subsamples. Two random subsamples of sizes 173 and 125 from the original dataset were created and EFA was conducted. In both the cases, the single factor appeal construct emerged, meeting all the requirements. Hence, validation of factor analysis was achieved.

4.6 MANCOVA RESULTS

To answer RQ2 of this study, what is the influence of brand spokescharacters on consumers’ pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour (specifically, intentions to recycle)?, one-way (i.e., single factor, eight levels: type of condition) and 8 X 2 two- way (i.e., two factors: type of condition and gender) independent samples multivariate analysis of variance (MANCOVA) with past recycling behaviour, perceived behavioural control, and subjective norms as covariates was performed, and the results are presented in the following sections.

4.6.1 One-way MANCOVA with three covariates Two separate one-way independent samples MANCOVA (for untransformed and transformed dependent variables) with past behaviour, perceived behavioural control, and subjective norms as covariates, were conducted using SPSS v26.0. Since there was no difference between the findings between transformed and untransformed dependent variables, results with untransformed data are presented.

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One-way MANCOVA results Box’s Test of equality of covariance matrices yielded a significant result (Box’s M = 144.61, F = 3.366, p=.000), which suggested that the null hypothesis that the observed covariance matrices of the dependent variables are equal across the group, is rejected. Therefore, Pillai’s trace was reported (Hair et al., 2014). The Pillai’s trace 2 test statistic was significant (p=.013, ηp = .028, observed power =.983) suggesting that the type of condition had a significant effect on linear combination of dependent variables. Levene’s test of equality of error variances was met for cognitive attitude towards recycling, but not for affective recycling attitude and recycling intention.

The between-subjects effects result of one-way independent samples MANCOVA revealed a significant difference between cognitive attitudes across 2 groups [F statistics = 3.56, p = .001, ηp = .054, observed power = .971], but not 2 between affective attitude [F statistics = .355, p = .928, ηp = .006, power = .162] and 2 recycling intention [F statistics = .454, p = .867, ηp = .007, observed power = .20]. However, effect sizes were quite small, and for affective attitude and intentions the observed power was quite less. Figure 4.2 shows the variation in dependent variables across the eight group conditions.

Figure 4.2 Marginal means for dependent variables

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For cognitive attitude towards recycling, post hoc pairwise comparison of means showed that mean attitude in all conditions was significantly higher than the control group condition. Even though effect size was small, it is interesting to note that exposure to a recycling message with a recycling logo or brand spokescharacter as endorser had significantly enhanced participants’ cognitive attitude towards recycling as compared to the control group.

The low observed power may be the reason that MANCOVA test was not able to detect significant differences between the eight groups on affective attitude towards recycling and recycling intentions. When referring to Figure 4.2, it is clear that as compared to the control group, affective attitude towards recycling increased except under the condition of Michelin Man as endorser in the message. For recycling intentions, the control group had the highest recycling intentions; scores on all other

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treatment conditions were less than the control group score, even though not significantly lower.

4.6.2 Two-way MANCOVA using three covariates A two factor independent samples MANCOVA using past behaviour, perceived behavioural control, and subjective norms as covariates was conducted with gender (i.e., two levels) and type of condition (i.e., eight levels) as factors.

In a two factor MANCOVA analysis, each cell must have at least 20 cases (Hair et al., 2014). However, in this study, a total of three cells have less than 20 cases, which may cast some doubt on the robustness of the findings (see Table 4.13). Since there was no difference between the MANCOVA results between untransformed and transformed data, the original data was used for the two- factor MANCOVA analysis. The results are presented next.

Table 4.13 Number of cases in each cell of two factor (Type of condition and Gender) MANCOVA

Note: A total of 4 cases were deleted, which did not report gender as either male or female. Therefore, only 445 cases were used.

Two-way MANCOVA results Box’s Test of equality of covariance matrices yielded a significant result (Box’s M = 269.425, F = 2.854, p=.000), which suggested that the null hypothesis that stated that the observed covariance matrices of the dependent variables are equal across the group is rejected. Therefore, Pillai’s trace was reported (Hair et al., 2014). The Pillai’s trace test statistic was significant for type of condition, gender, and type of condition X gender interaction, suggesting that they had a significant effect on linear

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combination of dependent variables. Levene’s test of equality of error variances was also only met for cognitive attitude towards recycling.

The between-subjects effects results of two-way independent samples MANCOVA revealed significant interaction effects between type of condition and 2 gender for cognitive attitude towards recycling [F statistic = 3.101, p=.003, ηp = .048, observed power= .945] and marginal significant interaction effect for recycling 2 intentions [F statistic =1.901, p=.068, ηp = .03, observed power= .755], but not for 2 affective attitude towards recycling [F statistic = 1.44, p=.186, ηp = .023, observed power= .611]. There was a gender main effect for affective attitude towards recycling 2 [F statistic = 16.269, p=.000, ηp = .037, observed power= .981, Mean Female =5.93,

Mean Male = 5.59]. Also, while affective attitude towards recycling for males was marginally higher than females in the control group, except for in the Coco the Monkey condition, females reported a higher affective attitude towards recycling under all treatment conditions.

For cognitive attitude towards recycling, pairwise comparison between male and female participants across the conditions revealed that significant differences exist under Tony the Tiger, Mr. Clean, and M&M Red conditions only, while a marginally significant difference was observed under Gnome condition (p=.10). For recycling intention, pairwise comparison between male and female participants revealed that significant differences exist only under the M&M Red condition (see Appendix D-n). These findings suggest that, while selecting anthropomorphized spokescharacters, environmental marketers must keep in mind that some of them may not be equally effective for both males and females.

For affective attitude towards recycling, only gender main effect was reported. In the control group condition, females reported marginally lower affective attitude towards recycling than males, however in all treatment conditions except Coco the Monkey group, females reported higher affective attitude towards recycling than males did. This finding suggests that brand spokescharacters in general influenced the affective attitude of females more than that of males. Further, both males and females reported similar recycling intentions scores in the control group and whereas under all spokescharacter conditions, recycling intentions score for males went down (though not significantly), it rose under three spokescharacter conditions for females (though

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not significantly), indicating a possibility that spokescharacters influence females more positively than males.

These two findings are in contrast to what Phillips et al. (2019) reported, i.e., advertisers find brand spokescharacters equally suitable for both genders. It is noteworthy that they concluded this on the basis of percentage of spokescharacters’ advertisement that appeared in magazines targeting men and women.

4.7 CONFIRMATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS (CFA)

CFA and hypothesis testing using SEM was conducted to test the proposed model developed in Chapter 2 of this thesis. These analysis will also help to answer RQ2 of this study, as the effect of spokescharacter’s attributes on recycling intentions will be observed.

As the other constructs in the conceptual model were taken directly from past studies (e.g., trustworthiness, expertise, attractiveness, relevancy, recycling intention, and affective attitude) confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to confirm whether this study’s data fits well with the underlying factor structure for these constructs (Hair et al., 2014).

CFA is used to test how well the measured variables represent a small number of constructs (Hair et al., 2014). Whereas EFA explores the data and suggests factor structures based on statistical findings, CFA is based on theoretical concerns, in a sense that the researcher specifies which items load on the construct before the data analysis is performed and confirms how well the theoretical specifications of factors matches the actual data. Therefore, CFA helps the researcher to confirm or reject the measurement model developed using EFA. Hair et al. (2014) recommends using a minimum of three variables per construct for CFA, and in this study, this requirement was met. The items used to measure each construct in CFA is presented in Appendix H.

4.7.1 Testing two models using CFA Two different measurement models were tested using CFA. The descriptions of these models are as follows:

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1) In the first model, seven constructs i.e., spokescharacter’s appeal, perceived trustworthiness, expertise, attractiveness, relevancy, affective attitude, and recycling intention were included. 2) In the second model, attractiveness dimension was dropped as the literature review has suggested that it may not be a relevant endorser attribute in the social marketing context.

4.7.2 Recommended model fit parameters Hair et al. (2014, p. 584) suggested the acceptable values for different model fit indices based on the number of variables (i.e., items) in the model and the sample size. Accordingly, for items greater than or equal to 30, and if sample size is greater than 250, following are the recommended values for individual fit indices.

1) RMSEA should be less than .07 2) SRMR should be less than or equal to .08 3) CFI or TLI should be above 0.90 4) Normed chi-square (i.e., model chi-square value divided by degrees of freedom) should be less than 3, and significant p value is expected due to the large sample size.

4.7.3 Checking construct validity and reliability Using CFA, convergent and discriminant validity were analysed as follows.

1) Convergent validity: high item loadings on a factor indicates convergent validity. All item loadings on the respective factor must be statistically significant and at least 0.5 or more, and ideally 0.7 or better. Another indicator of convergent validity is reliability, and in the case of CFA, construct reliability (CR) is used. A value of 0.7 or higher represents good reliability. 2) Discriminant validity: represents the extent to which a construct is truly distinct from other constructs used in the model. Hence, high discriminant validity establishes that a construct is unique and captures some phenomenon that other constructs do not (Hair et al., 2014). Discriminant validity is determined using average variance extracted (AVE) values. So, if AVE for a construct is greater than its squared correlation with each of the other construct in the model, discriminant validity is established.

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For model with the Attractiveness dimension CFA using SPSS AMOS v26 with seven latent variables (i.e., spokescharacter appeal, expertise, relevancy, attractiveness, trustworthiness, affective attitude, and recycling intention) resulted in the following outcome (see Table 4.14):

Table 4.14 Results of CFA

CMIN/DF P value TLI CFI RMSEA SRMR Model value 2.079 .000 .95 .956 .058 .0651 Recommended < 3 p< .05 > .90 > .90 < .07 < .08 value (Hair et al., 2014)

All factor loadings were significant and above 0.6, indicating convergent validity. Also, construct reliability (CR) for all constructs was above the recommended value of 0.7 (see Table 4.15), further confirming convergent validity. For discriminant analysis, the square root of average variance extracted for all constructs (reported in diagonal, in bold in Table 4.15) was greater than pairwise correlations between constructs, confirming discriminant validity. Therefore, the data fitted the model very well.

Table 4.15 #Convergent and Discriminant validity for the model

CR AVE (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

Appealing (1) 0.885 0.608 0.780

Trustworthiness 0.951 0.795 0.574*** 0.891 (2)

Expertise (3) 0.959 0.825 0.533*** 0.720*** 0.909

Attractiveness (4) 0.886 0.609 0.668*** 0.484*** 0.642*** 0.780

Affective attitude 0.840 0.638 0.368*** 0.551*** 0.344*** 0.253*** 0.799 (5)

Recycling 0.918 0.791 0.415*** 0.489*** 0.373*** 0.318*** 0.632*** 0.889 Intention (6)

Relevancy (7) 0.973 0.899 0.503*** 0.637*** 0.709*** 0.595*** 0.382*** 0.481*** 0.948 Significance of Correlations: *** p < 0.001 #This table is created using AMOS Plugin developed by Gaskin (2019)

For model without the Attractiveness dimension Since attractiveness may not be a suitable endorser attribute for the social marketing context, CFA using SPSS AMOS v26 with six latent variables (i.e.,

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spokescharacter’s appeal, expertise, relevancy, trustworthiness, affective attitude, and recycling intention) was also done and resulted in following outcome (see Table 4.16):

Table 4.16 Results of CFA (with six constructs)

CMIN/DF P value TLI CFI RMSEA SRMR Model value 2.291 .000 .953 .959 .064 .067 Recommended < 3 p< .05 > .90 > .90 < .07 < .08 value (Hair et al., 2014)

All factor loadings were significant and above 0.6, indicating convergent validity. Also, construct reliability (CR) for all constructs is above the recommended value of 0.7 (see Table 4.17), further confirming convergent validity. For discriminant analysis, the square root of average variance extracted for all constructs (reported in diagonal, in bold in Table 4.17) is greater than pairwise correlations between constructs, confirming discriminant validity. Therefore, the data fitted the model very well.

Table 4.17 #Convergent and Discriminant validity for model

CR AVE (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Appealing (1) 0.884 0.607 0.779 Trustworthiness 0.951 0.795 0.572*** 0.891 (2) Expertise (3) 0.959 0.825 0.533*** 0.720*** 0.908 Affective attitude 0.840 0.638 0.367*** 0.551*** 0.344*** 0.799 (4) Recycling 0.918 0.791 0.413*** 0.489*** 0.373*** 0.632*** 0.889 Intention (5) Relevancy (6) 0.973 0.899 0.501*** 0.637*** 0.709*** 0.382*** 0.481*** 0.948 Significance of Correlations: *** p < 0.001 #This table is created using AMOS Plugin developed by Gaskin (2019)

Hence, during SEM analysis, both the models will be tested for data fit.

4.8 HYPOTHESES TESTING USING STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELLING (SEM)

The testing of different hypotheses associated with the framework developed for this study will help answer the RQ2 of this study, what is the influence of brand

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spokescharacters on consumers’ pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour (specifically, intentions to recycle)?

The proposed conceptual framework of the study was tested using SPSS AMOS v26.0. First, the conceptual model with the attractiveness dimension was tested and the results are presented below (see Figure 4.3). Table 4.18 presents the standardized path coefficients for the model.

Figure 4.3 Standardized structural path coefficients and total effects with 90% bootstrapping confidence intervals (attractiveness included in the model)

Table 4.18 Standardized path coefficients

Structural path Standardized P value coefficient Appeal Relevancy .18 <.001 Appeal Trustworthiness .32 <.001 Expertise Relevancy .61 <.001 Expertise Trustworthiness .51 <.001 Attractiveness Trustworthiness -.19 <.01 Relevancy Trustworthiness .22 <.001 Trustworthiness Affective attitude .55 <.001 Appeal Recycling intentions .12 <.05 Relevancy Recycling intentions .23 <.001 Affective attitude Recycling intentions .50 <.001 Percentage variation in recycling intentions explained by the model is 47%

Table 4.19 presents the overall model fit statistics, and except for the GFI index, all other indices are well within the acceptable range, indicating that the data fitted the

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model quite well. Further, Hair et al. (2014) stated that instead of GFI, other indicators should be used to assess model fit, hence this point was not a major concern.

Table 4.19 Model fit indices with attractiveness dimension included

CMIN/ P GFI TLI CFI RMSEA SRMR DF value Model value 2.074 .000 .85 .95 .955 .058 .067 Recommended/expected < 3 p< .05 >.90 > .90 > .90 < .07 < .08 value (Hair et al., 2014)

As is evident from Table 4.18 and Figure 4.3, all the path coefficients were significant, and the model fitted the data quite well (i.e., 47% of the variance in recycling intention explained by the model). The spokescharacter attributes (i.e., appeal, relevancy, expertise, and trustworthiness) had significant influence over recycling intention. Based on the SEM analysis result, the proposed hypotheses are evaluated next.

4.8.1 Test of individual hypotheses In order to address the research question RQ2 of this study (i.e., can brand spokescharacters be an effective endorser for recycling cause?) the conceptual framework (developed for this study) was tested using structural equation modelling. Hypothesis related to attractiveness was tested first to decide whether this dimension would be retained or not.

H3: Spokescharacter attractiveness will positively influence its trustworthiness as endorser in a recycling message The standardized path coefficient from spokescharacter attractiveness to trustworthiness was significant (β= -.19, p<.01) but negative in sign (see Table 4.18). That is, spokescharacter attractiveness was reducing its perceived trustworthiness as endorser in recycling message. This finding was not surprising, given the previous research work has reported that endorser attractiveness may reduce communication effectiveness for attractiveness unrelated products or services (Kamins, 1990; Koernig & Page, 2002). This study confirmed the match-up hypothesis in the social marketing context using brand spokescharacters as endorsers. Hence, H3 was not supported.

Further, past research has also shown that attractiveness is not a suitable dimension to evaluate endorser effectiveness in the social marketing context (Martín & Crespo, 2013; Wheeler, 2009) and this study confirmed this finding using

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anthropomorphized characters as against human celebrities used by past studies. Attractiveness had a negligible, negative but significant effect on recycling intention (β= -.05, p<.05). Hence, it was decided to drop the attractiveness dimension and test the model again. Figure 4.4 represent the path coefficients and total effects when the model was re-run without spokescharacter’s attractiveness as an independent variable. As evident, all the path coefficients are significant at .001 level except appeal to intention, which was significant at .05 level. The data fitted the model quite well, with 47% of the variance explained. Table 4.20 presents the standardized path coefficients for the model.

Figure 4.4 Standardized structural path coefficients and total effects with 90% bootstrapping confidence intervals (excluding attractiveness)

Table 4.20 Standardized path coefficients

Structural path Standardized P value coefficient Appeal Relevancy .17 <.001 Appeal Trustworthiness .23 <.001 Expertise Relevancy .62 <.001 Expertise Trustworthiness .45 <.001 Relevancy Trustworthiness .22 <.001 Trustworthiness Affective attitude .55 <.001 Appeal Recycling intentions .12 <.05 Relevancy Recycling intentions .23 <.001 Affective attitude Recycling intentions .50 <.001 Total variance explained in recycling intentions was 47% in this model

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Table 4.21 presents the overall model fit statistics. It can be seen that except GFI, all model indices were within the acceptable range, indicating a good overall fit for the model.

Table 4.21 Model fit indices without attractiveness dimension

CMIN/ P value GFI TLI CFI RMSEA SRMR DF Model value 2.274 .000 .868 .954 .959 .063 .0688 Recommended/expec < 3 p< .05 >.90 > .90 > .90 < .07 < .08 ted value (Hair et al., 2014)

The individual hypotheses results are discussed in the proceeding sections.

H2: Spokescharacter expertise will positively influence the trustworthiness of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in a recycling message. As can be seen from Table 4.20, the standardized structural coefficient from spokescharacter expertise to trustworthiness is significant (β= .45, p<.001), indicating a substantial positive influence of spokescharacter expertise on its perceived trustworthiness as endorser in a recycling message. This means that if expertise goes up by one standard deviation, trustworthiness goes up by 0.45 standard deviation. This finding is in line with that of the previous research work, which found that endorser expertise is an important predictor of its trustworthiness (Garretson & Niedrich, 2004; Moorman et al., 1993; Wang & Scheinbaum, 2018). For example, an athlete endorsing a pair of running shoes or a dentist recommending oral care products are generally trusted by the audience, as they perceive the endorser to be an expert of the product endorsed (here due to profession). Therefore, H2 was supported.

H4: Spokescharacter appeal will positively influence the trustworthiness of anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters in a recycling message.

The standardized path coefficient from spokescharacter appeal to trustworthiness was significant (β= .23, p<.001), indicating a moderate positive influence of appeal on trustworthiness (see Table 4.20). The finding suggests that when spokescharacter appeal goes up by one standard deviation, its perceived trustworthiness will go up 0.23 standard deviation. Therefore, by selecting a more cute, humorous, likable character and one that primes nostalgic feelings as endorser in a recycling message will enhance its perceived trustworthiness. The finding also suggests that when designing a new spokescharacter as endorser for a recycling

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message, more cute and humorous appearance can result in higher perceived trustworthiness as endorser. Hence, H4 was supported.

H5: Spokescharacter appeal will positively influence consumers’ recycling intentions. The standardized path coefficient from spokescharacter appeal to recycling intention was marginally significant (β= .12, p<.05), indicating a small positive direct influence of appeal on recycling intention. The total effect of spokescharacter appeal on recycling intention was, however, moderate in size (β= .23, p<.01). This finding confirmed the main proposition of this study, that presence of appealing anthropomorphized spokescharacters in a recycling message can enhance recycling intentions. Specifically, it states that when spokescharacter appeal goes up by one standard deviation, the recycling intention should go up .23 standard deviation. This finding is quite interesting, as it suggests that by manipulating the appeal (through cuteness, humour, nostalgia or liking) of the endorser of a recycling message, it is possible to enhance recycling intention, and possibly behaviour. Hence, H5 was supported.

H6: Spokescharacter appeal will positively influence the relevancy of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in recycling message. The standardized path coefficient from spokescharacter appeal to relevancy was significant (β= .17, p<.001), indicating a small positive influence of appeal on relevancy (see Table 4.20). This finding suggests that it is possible to augment the perceived fit between the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter used as an endorser in a recycling message and the recycling cause by manipulating appeal. Past research has indicated that even though a celebrity endorser does not appear to be relevant to endorse a brand, liking and positive affect towards the celebrity can make the fit relevant (Fleck et al., 2012; Martín & Crespo, 2013). Appeal (with one of its attributes as liking) is tantamount to liking and affective attitude towards the endorser, and hence this finding corroborates that of previous research work but with anthropomorphized characters instead of human celebrities. Hence, H6 was supported.

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H7: Spokescharacter’s expertise will positively influence the relevancy of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in a recycling message. The standardized path coefficient from spokescharacter expertise to relevancy was significant (β= .62, p<.001), indicating a large positive influence of expertise on relevancy (see Table 4.20). This finding supports the previous research work, wherein expertise related to the endorsed product category was found to be a better predictor of endorser’s relevancy than physical attractiveness (Till & Busler, 1998, 2000). But an interesting thing to note in this study is that brand spokescharacter expertise is not in the recycling domain, but rather in the product category for which they were created (e.g., Tony the Tiger is a breakfast cereal expert, Mr. Clean for cleaning products, and Michelin Man for tyres). This finding then suggests that irrespective of their field, the brand spokescharacter’s expertise positively influences its relevancy as recycling endorser (note that the researcher asked about the general expertise of the characters, without stating the recycling context, see questionnaire in Appendix C for details) and the effect size is quite high. Hence, H7 is supported.

H8: Spokescharacter relevancy will positively influence anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter trustworthiness in a recycling message. The standardized path coefficient from spokescharacter relevancy to trustworthiness was significant (β= .22, p<.001), indicating a moderate positive influence of relevancy on trustworthiness (see Table 4.20). When a spokesperson is considered a relevant endorser for the advertised brand, the audience tends to have higher believability on the endorser’s claim (for e.g., doctor for anti-bacterial hand wash, musician for musical instruments or tennis player for tennis racquet). Martín and Crespo (2013) found the same effect in a social marketing context, where perceived fit led to higher endorser’s credibility. Therefore, this result confirms the findings of previous studies using anthropomorphized characters. Hence, H8 was supported.

H9: Spokescharacter relevancy will positively influence recycling intentions. The standardized path coefficient from spokescharacter relevancy to recycling intentions was significant (β= .23, p<.001), indicating a moderate positive influence of relevancy on recycling intentions (see Table 4.20). The total effect size of relevancy on recycling intention was also significant (β= .29, p<.01). Past research has found that higher persuasion occurs under the condition of high perceived fit between human celebrity endorser and the endorsed brand (Fleck et al., 2012; Misra & Beatty, 1990;

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Till & Busler, 2000; Wright, 2016). This study has confirmed the ‘matchup’ effect in the environmental marketing context using anthropomorphized characters. Hence, H9 was supported.

H10: Spokescharacter trustworthiness will positively influence affective attitude towards recycling The standardized path coefficient from spokescharacter trustworthiness to affective attitude towards recycling was significant (β= .55, p<.001), indicating a large positive influence of trustworthiness on affective attitude towards recycling (see Table 4.20). The source effectiveness literature has firmly established the positive influence of source trustworthiness on attitude towards a brand (Amos et al., 2008), therefore this finding is in line with that of the past research. Given the large beta coefficient, this finding suggests that endorser’s trustworthiness is an important dimension in the social marketing context, which is also suggested by Martín and Crespo (2013). Hence, H10 was supported.

H11: Affective attitude towards recycling will positively influence the recycling intention The standardized path coefficient from affective attitude towards recycling to recycling intentions was significant (β= .50, p<.001), indicating a large positive influence of affective attitude towards recycling on recycling intention (see Table 4.20). According to the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), attitude towards behaviour is an important predictor of behavioural intention (Ajzen, 1991). The TPB model has been applied extensively by past studies to predict recycling intentions (see Chapter 2, section 2.7.3), which have found that attitudes are significant predictors of intentions. This study confirmed the relationship between the two with anthropomorphized spokescharacters as endorsers of the recycling cause. This finding was expected as celebrity endorsement is all about emotions and affective attitude.

Even though not stated and included in the study, the following hypothesis was also tested.

Spokescharacter attractiveness and expertise will positively influence affective attitude towards recycling, mediated through spokescharacter trustworthiness. The total effect of attractiveness on affective attitude was not significant (β= -.084, p=.26) whereas total effect of expertise on affective attitude was significant (β= .274, p<.01). When a direct path was added from attractiveness and expertise to

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affective attitude towards recycling, the path coefficients were not significant. Mediation analysis showed a significant indirect effect of attractiveness (p<.05) and expertise (p<.001) on affective attitude towards recycling (see Table 4.22), even though attractiveness had a negative effect on affective attitude towards recycling.

Table 4.22 Serial mediation effects of trustworthiness on affective attitude

Unstandardized P- Standardized Indirect Path Estimate Value Estimate

Expertise --> Trustworthiness --> 0.219 0.001 0.284*** Affective Attitude Attractiveness --> Trustworthiness --> -0.087 0.024 -0.106* Affective Attitude *** p < 0.001, ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05

Hence, this hypothesis was partially supported. Trustworthiness fully mediates the effect of expertise on affective attitude towards recycling.

Finally, referring Figure 4.4, it can be stated that all the spokescharacter attributes had significant positive influence on recycling intention (total effects on recycling intentions: βappeal =.23, p< .01; βrelevancy =.29, p< .01; βexpertise =.30, p< .01;

βtrustworthiness =.28, p< .01). This confirms the main proposition of this study that brand spokescharacters can be effective endorsers in recycling messages and by manipulating attributes of an anthropomorphized spokescharacter used as endorser, recycling intentions can be enhanced.

Table 4.23 presents the serial mediation analysis results for the conceptual framework (Figure 4.4).

Table 4.23 #Serial mediation analysis

Unstandardized Standardized Indirect Path p-value Estimate Estimate

Appeal --> Relevancy --> Trustworthiness 0.030 0.003 0.035** Appeal --> Relevancy --> Trustworthiness --> 0.017 0.003 0.035** Affective Attitude Appeal --> Relevancy --> Trustworthiness --> 0.007 0.002 0.035** Affective Attitude --> Recycling Intention Appeal --> Relevancy -- > Recycling Intention 0.047 0.006 0.038**

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Appeal --> Trustworthiness --> Affective 0.116 0.001 0.131*** Attitude Appeal --> Trustworthiness --> Affective 0.049 0.001 0.131*** Attitude --> Recycling Intention Expertise --> Relevancy --> Trustworthiness 0.092 0.004 0.122** Expertise --> Relevancy --> Trustworthiness --> 0.052 0.003 0.122** Affective Attitude Expertise --> Relevancy --> Trustworthiness --> 0.022 0.003 0.122** Affective Attitude --> Recycling Intention

Expertise --> Relevancy --> Recycling Intention 0.143 0.007 0.133**

Expertise --> Trustworthiness --> Affective 0.193 0.001 0.250*** Attitude Expertise --> Trustworthiness --> Affective 0.082 0.001 0.250*** Attitude --> Recycling Intention Relevancy --> Trustworthiness --> Affective 0.069 0.004 0.110** Attitude Relevancy --> Trustworthiness --> Affective 0.029 0.003 0.110** Attitude --> Recycling Intention Trustworthiness --> Affective Attitude --> 0.241 0.001 0.169** Recycling Intention *** p < 0.001, ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05 # This table is prepared using AMOS plugin developed by Gaskin and Lim (2020)

4.8.2 Testing the model with control variables included As with MANCOVA, the effect of variables such as past recycling behaviour, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control on recycling intention were controlled to partition out the effect of spokescharacter attributes on recycling intentions. To achieve this, the SEM analysis was re-run with the three control variables included in the model and results are presented in Figure 4.5. Table 4.24 presents the standardized path coefficients and Table 4.25 presents the model fit indices. As can be seen from the table, SRMR value is marginally above the recommended .08 value. However, a value below 0.10 is considered acceptable (Hair et al., 2014).

Figure 4.5 Standardized structural path coefficients and 90% bootstrapping confidence intervals (with control variables)

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Table 4.24 Standardized path coefficients

Structural path Standardized P value coefficient Appeal Relevancy .17 <.001 Appeal Trustworthiness .24 <.001 Expertise Relevancy .61 <.001 Expertise Trustworthiness .45 <.001 Relevancy Trustworthiness .20 <.001 Trustworthiness Affective attitude .55 <.001 Appeal Recycling intentions .14 <.05 Relevancy Recycling intentions .22 <.001 Affective attitude Recycling intentions .50 <.001 Percentage variance explained in recycling intentions is 50%

Table 4.25 Model fit indices

CMIN/ P value GFI TLI CFI RMSEA SRMR DF Model value 2.345 .000 .854 .942 .949 .065 .0861 Recommended/exp < 3 p< .05 >.90 > .90 > .90 < .07 < .08 ected value (Hair et al., 2014)

All path coefficients were significant, and spokescharacter attributes predicted the recycling intentions even after controlling for the effects of past recycling behaviour, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control on recycling intentions. As for control variables, past recycling behaviour (β = .22, p<.001) and

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perceived behavioural control (β = .16, p<.01) significantly predicted recycling intention, whereas subjective norms did not (β = .08, n.s).

4.8.3 Multigroup analysis using recycling involvement as moderating variable For testing whether recycling involvement moderates the effects of spokescharacter attributes on recycling intentions, multigroup analysis was conducted using SPSS AMOS v26.0, and results are presented. Specifically, the following hypothesis was tested:

H12: Spokescharacter attributes will influence recycling intentions differently for low involved and high involved participants. In order to see whether differences exist between the low involved and high involved participants towards recycling, data on the recycling involvement variable was median spilt (Garretson & Niedrich, 2004) to create two subgroups [n= 135, x̄ low involved = 4.62, SD=1.07; n=184, x̄ high involved = 6.57, SD=.427; t = -20.01, p= .000], one with participants whose involvement with recycling was low (e.g. recycling is not important to me, and recycling means nothing to me) and the other with participants whose involvement with recycling was high (e.g. recycling is important to me, recycling means a lot to me). When the multigroup analysis was performed using SPSS AMOS v26, no overall significant difference was found between the two groups (chi square value = 37.344, df=28, p=.11). Post that, individual structural paths were analysed for differences between the two groups by constraining each of the direct paths in the model independently (Garretson & Niedrich, 2004). The individual path coefficients are presented in Figure 4.6 and Table 4.26.

The standardized structural path coefficient from spokescharacter relevancy to recycling intention for low and high involved participant groups is not statistically different from each other (chi-square statistic = 1.457, p=.227), and so was from spokescharacter appeal to trustworthiness (chi-square statistic = .000, p=.983), spokescharacter expertise to trustworthiness (chi- square statistic = 2.075, p =.150), and spokescharacter expertise to relevancy (chi square statistic =.06, p=.806).

Figure 4.6 Comparison between low involved and high involved participants (standardized structural path coefficients)

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Table 4.26 Standardized path coefficient: low involved and high involved participants

Low involved High involved participants participants Structural path β P value β P value coefficient coefficient

Appeal Relevancy .23 <.01 .11 <.10 Appeal Trustworthiness .24 <.01 .24 <.001 Expertise Relevancy .51 <.001 .67 <.001 Expertise Trustworthiness .50 <.001 .38 <.001 Relevancy .15 <.10 .22 <.05 Trustworthiness Trustworthiness .42 <.001 .49 <.001 Affective attitude towards recycling Appeal Recycling .26 <.01 .06 n.s intentions Relevancy Recycling .24 <.01 .19 <.05 intentions Affective affective .26 <.01 .26 <.01 Recycling intentions

Table 4.27 presents the comparative findings for both low involved and high involved groups obtained using 2000 samples bootstrapping procedure to create 95% confidence intervals for reporting total effect of spokescharacter attributes and other variables on recycling intentions.

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Table 4.27 Bootstrapping confidence intervals: Low vs High involved groups

Structural path Low involved participants High involved participants (n =135) standardized (n=184) standardized structural path coefficient structural path coefficient Total effect [95% CI] Total effect [95% CI] Recycling intention .34** [.13 - .53] .11$ [-.04 - .27] Spokescharacter’s appeal Recycling intention .25* [.06 - .44] .22^ [-.01 - .47] Spokescharacter’s relevancy Recycling intention .19** [.08 - .30] .19** [.07 - .34] Spokescharacter’s expertise Recycling intention .11*** [.04 - .21] .13^ [0.00 - .33] Spokescharacter’s trustworthiness Recycling intention .26*** [.10 - .45] .26^ [-.02 - .57] Affective attitude towards recycling Spokescharacter’s relevancy .23* [.02 - .42] .11^ [-.02 - .27]

Spokescharacter’s appeal Spokescharacter’s .15^ [-.02 - .33] .22^ [-.02 - .41] trustworthiness

Spokescharacter’s relevancy Affective attitude .15^ [0.00 - .16] .22* [0.00 - .23] Spokescharacter’s relevancy ^ * ** *** p< .10 p<.05, p<.01, p<.001, $ not significant

While for the combined group, spokescharacter relevancy was more prominent than spokescharacter appeal in predicting recycling intentions (βappeal = .23, p<.01 and

βrelevancy = .29, p<.01), for low involved participants, spokescharacter appeal was more dominant (βappeal = .34, p<.01 and βrelevancy = .25, p<.05) even though both attributes were significant predictors of intentions. For high involved participants, relevancy was a marginally significant predictor of recycling intention while appeal was not (βappeal

= .11, n.s; βrelevancy = .22, p <.10). The total effect of spokescharacter appeal on recycling intentions was significant only for the low involved group (βappeal = .34, p<.01), and not for the high involved group (βappeal = .11, n.s.). Whereas spokescharacter relevancy (p <.05) and trustworthiness (p <.001) were significant predictors of recycling intentions for low involved participants, these attributes marginally predicted (p <.10) recycling intentions in the case of high involved participants.

Spokescharacter expertise was a significant predictor of recycling intentions (p

<.01) for both low and high involved participants with identical β. With regards to affective attitude as predictor of recycling intentions, even though β was identical for

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both groups, it was highly significant for the low involved group (p <.001) and only marginally significant for the high involved group (p <.10). For high involved participants, spokescharacter relevancy was a significant predictor of affective attitude towards recycling (p <.05), but only marginally significant for low involved ones (p <.10) Also, for low involved participants, the model explained 49% of the variance in recycling intentions, as compared to 28% for high involved participants.

Table 4.28 presents the summary of the hypotheses testing results.

Table 4.28 Summary results of all hypotheses tested

Hypothesis Hypothesis Result No. H1 The appeal of brand spokescharacter will consists Supported of its liking, cuteness, humour, and nostalgia. H2 Spokescharacter expertise will positively influence Supported the trustworthiness of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in a recycling message. H3 Spokescharacter attractiveness will positively Not supported influence the trustworthiness of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in a recycling message. H4 Spokescharacter appeal will positively influence Supported the trustworthiness of anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters in a recycling message. H5 Spokescharacter appeal will positively influence Supported consumers’ recycling intentions H6 Spokescharacter appeal will positively influence Supported the relevancy of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in recycling message. H7 Spokescharacter’s expertise will positively Supported influence the relevancy of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in a recycling message. H8 Spokescharacter relevancy will positively Supported influence trustworthiness of anthropomorphized spokescharacter in a recycling message. H9 Spokescharacter relevancy will positively Supported influence recycling intentions H10 Spokescharacter trustworthiness will positively Supported influence affective attitude towards recycling H11 Affective attitude towards recycling will positively Supported influence the recycling intention H12 Spokescharacter attributes will influence recycling Supported intentions differently for low involved and high involved participants

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4.9 CONCLUSIONS

The one-way MANCOVA (with type of condition as a factor) results revealed significant differences between the groups only on cognitive attitude towards recycling. For affective attitude towards recycling and recycling intentions, the observed power of the MANCOVA test was very low. The low observed power of MANCOVA test can be the reason that significant differences, even if they existed between the groups for affective attitude towards recycling and recycling intentions, were not detected.

The two-way MANCOVA (gender and type of condition as factors) revealed a gender main effect on affective attitude towards recycling, such that females reported higher affective attitude towards recycling than males. For cognitive attitude towards recycling, significant interaction effect between gender and type of condition emerged. For recycling intention, interaction effect was marginally significant only. However, effect sizes were quite small in all cases, hence the practical significance of these findings are limited.

SEM analysis was conducted to test individual hypotheses associated with the conceptual framework of this study. The results provided support to all but one of the hypotheses. Interesting differences between low and high involved participants were also found. In Chapter 5, the findings are discussed in detail, together with theoretical and practical implications they offer. The limitations of research and future research directions are then discussed.

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Chapter 5: Discussions and Conclusions

5.1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter provides a detailed discussion of the results of the quantitative study as well as implications for theory and practice. The aim of this thesis was to examine the use of brand spokescharacters, which are fictional, animated characters created by marketers, to influence consumers’ recycling intentions. This study responds to gaps in research, and in doing so, two research questions were developed:

• RQ1: What is the influence of brand spokescharacters on consumers’ pro- environmental attitudes and behaviour (specifically, intentions to recycle)? • RQ2: What are the key constituents that form the appeal of anthropomorphized spokescharacters?

This chapter is organized in several sections (see Figure 5.1). First, an overall discussion is presented in section 5.2, which is based on the result of the hypotheses. This is followed by implications for theory and practice in section 5.3. Limitations of the study are presented next in section 5.4, followed by future research directions and conclusions in section 5.5.

Figure 5.1 Outline of Chapter 5

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5.2 OVERALL DISCUSSION

This study was motivated by the intent to examine whether anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters are effective endorsers when used in an environmental marketing context, given that human celebrities were used successfully for promoting social causes. After reviewing the relevant body of literature, a gap regarding anthropomorphized spokescharacter’s appeal was identified and hence, decided to explore the constituents and structure of the spokescharacter’s appeal construct. To answer the two research questions of this study, a conceptual framework and associated hypotheses were developed with the support of relevant literature. For the first research question (i.e., What is the influence of brand spokescharacters on consumers’ pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour (specifically, intentions to recycle)?), a two-step analysis was performed, first using MANCOVA where an experimental design was deployed and differences on key dependent variables i.e., recycling attitudes and intentions were analysed. Post that, data from six different spokescharacter groups was merged, and all the hypotheses associated with the framework were tested using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). For the second research question (i.e., What are the key constituents that form the appeal of anthropomorphized spokescharacters?), an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used. Table 5.1 presents the summary of the outcome of research hypotheses tested in this study.

Table 5.1 Summary of outcome of research hypotheses

No. Research hypothesis Supported by this study H1 The appeal of brand spokescharacter will consists ✓ of its liking, cuteness, humour, and nostalgia. H2 Spokescharacter expertise will positively influence ✓ the trustworthiness of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in a recycling message. H3 Spokescharacter attractiveness will positively X influence the trustworthiness of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in a recycling message. H4 Spokescharacter appeal will positively influence ✓ the trustworthiness of anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters in a recycling message. H5 Spokescharacter appeal will positively influence ✓ consumers’ recycling intentions.

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H6 Spokescharacter appeal will positively influence ✓ the relevancy of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in recycling message. H7 Spokescharacter expertise will positively influence ✓ the relevancy of the anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter in a recycling message. H8 Spokescharacter relevancy will positively ✓ influence trustworthiness of anthropomorphized spokescharacter in a recycling message. H9 Spokescharacter relevancy will positively ✓ influence recycling intentions H10 Spokescharacter trustworthiness will positively ✓ influence affective attitude towards recycling H11 Affective attitude towards recycling will positively ✓ influence the recycling intention H12 Spokescharacter’s attributes will influence ✓ recycling intentions differently for low involved and high involved participants

In the following sections, discussion on the two research questions is presented.

5.2.1 Research question 1: Constituents of anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter appeal This study explored the constituents of anthropomorphised brand spokescharacter appeal using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). The findings suggest that anthropomorphized spokescharacter liking, nostalgia, cuteness, and humour constitute its appeal, and form a single dimension construct. Cuteness had the highest influence on appeal, followed by liking, humour, and nostalgia. One possible explanation for this finding can be that anthropomorphized characters are designed to look cute (Lawrence, 1986) and past studies have concluded cuteness to be the main reason for the universal appeal of popular anthropomorphic characters such as Mickey Mouse and Hello Kitty (Gould, 1979; Hosany et al., 2013; Lawrence, 1986). Therefore, this study has empirically confirmed the previous studies’ propositions which did not offer empirical evidence of cuteness as a predictor of appeal.

The finding regarding nostalgia is surprising, as nostalgia begets positive affect and liking towards the source (Wildschut et al., 2006) and liking was highly correlated with appeal in this study (see Appendix D-f). Therefore, nostalgia should have high correlation with appeal. Phillips et al. (2019) in their study found that popular characters of the past were almost entirely absent from magazine advertisements (data analysed in 2015) and concluded that ‘nostalgia does not appear to be the key factor

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driving growth in spokes-character use’ (p. 223). Another explanation for these findings can be that appeal is more about general liking, physical appearance of the spokescharacter (due to cuteness and humour), and personality traits depicted in advertising and less about the feelings associated with the character. Future research by way of qualitative study could explore this proposition further.

The finding also suggests that if environmental marketers select existing brand spokescharacters, they should consider ones that score high on cuteness and likability, even though they may appear less humorous or are relatively recently created (as a result have less nostalgia associated with them). Alternatively, environmental organizations can create highly appealing spokescharacters by giving them highly cute and likable appearances. The findings of Callcott and Phillips (1996) provide some clues on creating likable and appealing characters, which include neotenous shapes (i.e., kindchenschema or babyschema appearance or juvenile looks), relevant props, and contemporary appearance. This further establishes that appeal is more about physical appearance of the character and less about feelings associated with it. For instance, a relevant prop like a recycling bin with an anthropomorphic spokescharacter can enhance its likability and hence appeal. As this study found that spokescharacter’s appeal positively influences recycling intentions, creating and using highly appealing characters in recycling messages may enhance recycling intentions.

5.2.2 Research question 2: Influence of brand spokescharacters on recycling attitudes and intentions Discussion of MANCOVA results Even though the recycling message did not present any factual information (e.g., benefits of recycling, per capita waste production, or low recycling rates posing a challenge) to provoke participants’ thinking process, it is surprising that cognitive attitudes were significantly enhanced under all spokescharacters’ conditions as compared to the control group. Since spokescharacters used in this study were generally found likable, one explanation for the result is that liking got transferred to the recycling cause as reported by earlier studies also (Bergkvist & Zhou, 2016; Langmeyer & Walker, 1991; McCracken, 1989). As a result, affective attitude towards recycling, even though not significantly higher than the control group, marginally increased in five out of six spokescharacter conditions. This affective attitude then may have enhanced the cognitive attitude towards recycling, as the Feel-Think-Do model

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in marketing may suggest (Schiffman, 2013). To check this proposition, cognitive attitude was added as a latent variable in the study’s model, with affective attitude predicting the cognitive attitude, and was tested using SEM. The path was found to be significant (β =.725, p<.001), indicating a high influence of affective attitude on cognitive attitude.

For recycling intention, the mean score on intention decreased (even though not statistically significantly) under all seven treatment conditions. Does that mean that presence of the anthropomorphized spokescharacters had a negative influence on intention? One plausible explanation can be offered by focusing on the wording of the questions asked for recycling intention (i.e., to what extent are you willing to recycle after seeing this recycling poster/appeal in the next 4 weeks; how likely are you to recycle after seeing this recycling poster/appeal in the next 4 weeks; to what extent does this recycling poster/appeal motivate you to recycle in the next 4 weeks?’. As the question specifically asked about recycling intentions, giving reference to the recycling poster/appeal, some confounding effect may have occurred. For instance, while answering this question, participants may have thought about the overall appearance of the message and possibly towards other design elements of the message (i.e., layout, verbal text) apart from the spokescharacter. Therefore, attitude towards the message (which was not captured in the study) may have influenced the participants while answering this question, where they may have found the message design unappealing and/or unrealistic and hence, not convincing due to the negative attitude towards the message (MacKenzie & Lutz, 1989). That is, liking towards spokescharacters may have enhanced intentions in treatment groups, but attitude towards the message may have pulled it down. Further, participants in the control group already reported high recycling intention, and hence a brief exposure (20 seconds) to the recycling message failed to further enhance intentions.

The findings of two-way MANCOVA (with gender and type of condition as factors) suggest that different spokescharacters may have varying influence on cognitive attitudes of males and females, and that environmental marketers should select one that is nearly equally effective for both genders. For recycling intentions, when scores across gender are compared between different treatment groups, significant differences were reported only under the M&M Red condition (i.e., for males, the recycling intention score dropped as compared to the control group, whereas

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for females, the recycling intention scores improved). Hence, based on examples used in this study, if enhancing recycling intentions is the aim of communication, it is advised not to use M&M Red as an endorser in the recycling message because it may negatively impact males’ recycling intentions.

Discussion of SEM results When considering recycling causes, spokescharacter attributes that include appeal, expertise, trustworthiness, and relevancy were found to be significant positive predictors of recycling intentions, thus providing empirical evidence that anthropomorphized spokescharacters, when used in recycling messages as endorsers, can enhance recycling intentions. The highest standardised coefficient for total effects on recycling intention was for expertise (β = .30), followed by relevancy (β = .29), trustworthiness (β = .28), and appeal (β = .23). It is interesting to note that while spokescharacters are considered experts of the product they represent; this unrelated expertise is driving their relevancy as recycling cause endorsers. This finding supports this study’s contention that brand spokescharacters can be better endorsers for recycling causes compared to human celebrities as these spokescharacters are considered experts of the product they represent, mainly due to their long association with a single product, unlike human celebrities who endorse multiple brands at the same time and may not be perceived as experts (Garretson & Niedrich, 2004).

A direct path from expertise to recycling intention was added in the model but yielded an insignificant path coefficient, confirming that the effects of the expertise dimension on intention is fully mediated by trustworthiness, relevancy and affective attitude. That is, an expert spokescharacter was perceived more trustworthy and relevant as endorser and the trustworthiness positively influenced the affective attitude towards the cause, which in turn enhanced recycling intention. This finding is similar to the one reported by (Garretson & Niedrich, 2004), wherein spokescharacter’s expertise influenced brand attitude mediated through its trust.

Erdogan et al. (2001) in their study with advertising practitioners found that they rated celebrities’ trustworthiness and expertise as more important dimensions for selecting an endorser for a technical product like home computer and physical attractiveness, likability, and familiarity for an attractiveness related product like blue jeans. The current study presents that when using anthropomorphized spokescharacters as endorsers for environmental causes like recycling, expertise is the

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most important dimension to consider. Friedman and Friedman (1979) suggested that broadly, there are three types of endorsers used in advertising, i.e., celebrities, experts, and typical consumers. While celebrities draw their persuasiveness from to their liking or attractiveness, experts derive it from their expertise while typical consumers from their similarity to target audience. Accordingly, the current study has shown that anthropomorphized spokescharacters derive their persuasiveness from their expertise and appeal in an environmental marketing context.

This study has also shown that relevancy of the anthropomorphized characters can be modified by manipulating appeal (i.e., through liking, cuteness, humour, and nostalgia) and perceived expertise. Relevancy or celebrity-brand fit is an important consideration as, under the high fit condition, communication effectiveness enhances (Batra & Homer, 2004; Choi & Rifon, 2012; Kahle & Homer, 1985). Marketers may enhance the perceived fit between human celebrity endorser and endorsed brand by hiring popular celebrities, which limits their choice pool and results in huge financial outlay. Popular celebrities also endorse multiple brands simultaneously, reducing their trustworthiness. This study shows that it is possible to modify anthropomorphized spokescharacters’ relevancy by manipulating appeal and expertise. Till and Busler (1998, 2000) showed that expertise is a better variable to enhance perceived celebrity- brand fit than attractiveness. Whereas previous studies reported these findings using human celebrities, this study has found similar results using anthropomorphized spokescharacters, While Sheehan (2020) found both attractiveness and expertise as predictors of relevancy, in this study, expertise and the new construct appeal are the predictors of endorser relevancy.

Trustworthiness was found to be an important mediator in this study, which partially mediates the influence of spokescharacter appeal and relevancy on recycling intentions and fully mediates the influence of spokescharacter expertise on affective attitude and recycling intentions. These results corroborate the findings of Garretson and Niedrich (2004), where spokescharacter trust mediates the effects of its relevance, nostalgia, and expertise on brand attitude. This study confirmed the findings of previous studies that found that celebrity endorser’s trustworthiness is the most important dimension to consider in the social marketing context (Samman et al., 2009; Wheeler, 2009). Expertise was the most influential predictor of trust, as found in previous studies (Crosby et al., 1990; Garretson & Niedrich, 2004; Ohanian, 1991;

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Wang & Scheinbaum, 2018). In this study, relevancy was a significant predictor of spokescharacter trustworthiness. This finding is in contrast to that of Garretson and Niedrich (2004), who did not find the relevancy-to-trust link to be significant.

Spokescharacter’s perceived attractiveness was found to reduce its perceived trustworthiness and had a marginal negative influence on recycling intention. Kamins (1990) reported interesting results that confirmed the matchup hypothesis i.e., attractive endorsers are effective only for attractiveness-related products. In their study, the mean scores on advertiser and spokesperson’s believability and credibility, brand attitude, and attitude towards advertisement were lower under the attractive celebrity condition i.e., attractiveness negatively influenced these variables. These findings confirmed that physically attractive endorsers may actually decrease communication effectiveness for attractiveness unrelated products. Koernig and Page (2002) also confirmed the matchup hypothesis by showing that an attractive service provider is perceived as more expert and trustworthy only for the attractiveness related service (i.e., hairdressing) and for the attractiveness unrelated service (i.e., dental service), higher attractiveness reduced perceived expertness and trust level of the service provider, possibly as consumers do not expect dentists to necessarily look attractive. On a similar note, it can be argued that people do not expect to see an attractive spokesperson for an environmental cause but rather a scientist, researcher, or local community leader and if they encounter one, they may not positively evaluate such an association and may react negatively.

Past studies have also reported that attractiveness is not a suitable dimension when selecting a celebrity endorser for social causes (Martín & Crespo, 2013; Wheeler, 2009). Hence, this study confirmed the matchup hypothesis in an environmental marketing context using anthropomorphized spokescharacters as endorsers, i.e., attractiveness is not an important dimension even while using created spokescharacters for a social cause. Hence, when selecting existing spokescharacters, environmental marketers should select characters with a low attractiveness score or design ones with low attractiveness. This is assuming that attractiveness is measured using items (‘classy’, ‘beautiful’, ‘elegant’, ‘sexy’) developed by Ohanian (1990), as in this study. Further, future research should explore what constitutes the attractiveness of an anthropomorphized brand spokescharacter.

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This study also conducted a multiple group comparison using recycling involvement as a variable (low involved versus high involved with recycling) measured using items such as ‘recycling is important for me’ and ‘recycling means a lot to me’. The findings from the bootstrapping procedure to create 95% confidence intervals for total effects found interesting results when comparing low involved and high involved participants. For low involved participants, spokescharacter appeal had a higher influence on recycling intention than relevancy, whereas for high involved participants, spokescharacter relevancy had a marginally significant effect on recycling intentions (p< .10), whereas appeal had no influence on intentions. Spokescharacter expertise had a significant and similar sized influence on recycling intentions for both groups. Again, spokescharacter trustworthiness was a significant predictor of recycling intention for low involved participants, but only a marginally significant predictor for high involved participants (p< .10). These findings highlight two important points. First, spokescharacter presence exerted more influence on low involved participants as against high involved participants, confirming the predictions of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981) and second, spokescharacter expertise is a formidable attribute, which works for both low and high involved participants. So, even though for high involved participants other spokescharacter attributes did not matter, expertise stood out. This suggests that if environmental organizations use existing anthropomorphic spokescharacters or design new ones, expertise is the most important attribute to consider.

The total effect of affective attitude towards recycling-to-recycling intention was highly significant under the low involvement condition (p<.001) but not significant at a .05 significance level for the high involved group (p< .10), even though the standardized coefficient was the same for both groups. This finding may imply that for high involved participants, recycling intentions were driven less by affective attitude, and more by an alternate route such as spokescharacter relevancy. So, low involved participants took a more affective processing route to persuasion whereas high involved participants took a cognitive processing route, elaborating on whether the shown spokescharacter is a relevant endorser or not.

A surprising finding was that relevancy to trustworthiness total effect was only marginally significant for both groups (p< .10), even though previous studies have found that highly relevant endorsers appear more trustworthy (Kamins & Gupta, 1994;

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Martín & Crespo, 2013; Wheeler, 2009). This finding is similar to what Garretson and Niedrich (2004) reported though, and they suggested that relevancy as endorser appeared as a relatively more important dimension for human endorsers than for anthropomorphized spokescharacters. That is, even though an anthropomorphized spokescharacter appears less relevant for endorsing a brand (e.g., Aflac Duck for Aflac Insurance), it still can be effective, deriving its relevance from liking, appearance, and expertise given through advertisements.

Further, whereas the model explained 49% of the total variance in recycling intentions for low involved participants, only 28% variance was explained for high involved participants. This indicated that the model better predicted the variations in recycling intentions for those consumers who are less involved with the recycling cause. This finding shows that using anthropomorphized spokescharacters will be more effective for enhancing recycling intentions of low involved consumers.

5.2.3 Anthropomorphized spokescharacters triumph over human spokespersons Even though it was not the aim of the study to empirically show that anthropomorphized spokescharacters can be better endorsers for recycling causes than human spokespersons, some findings did offer empirical support for this. For instance, even though average familiarity level of a spokescharacter was high, it was only marginally related to its liking and trustworthiness and not to its relevancy as an endorser. Familiarity with the endorser is generally considered an important variable, which can engender liking as well as trust towards the endorser Erdogan 2001(Erdogan et al., 2001; Rossiter & Percy, 1987). When considering human celebrities, familiarity is an important variable considered by advertisers to select them (Erdogan et al., 2001; Shimp, 1997), possibly due to the fact that if the audience is not familiar with the chosen celebrity, she/he may not be likable or perceived as likable and trustworthy, hence not be an effective endorser. For anthropomorphized spokescharacters, it appears that this is not the case. Even new spokescharacters (with low familiarity) created and used by environmental organizations can be effective endorsers, possibly due to liking and trustworthiness enjoyed generally by cartoons and anthropomorphized characters (Callcott & Alvey, 1991) given their cuteness (Masip et al., 2004) and humorous appearance (Gruner, 2000). This finding highlights the

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potential advantage of using anthropomorphized spokescharacters instead of human ones.

In general, all six spokescharacters used in this study were perceived likable and appealing to participants with high mean scores on both variables. The correlation (as measured by Kendall’s tau_b coefficient) between participant’s age and spokescharacter liking and appeal was not significant, indicating age has no effect on the two attributes. Further, male and female participants found the characters used in the study as equally likable and appealing (F statistics were insignificant). These findings agree with those of previous research works, which reported universal liking and appeal of anthropomorphized characters (Callcott & Alvey, 1991; Lawrence, 1986; Phillips et al., 2019) and highlights an advantage of using them over human celebrities for environmental causes as it is very difficult to find a human celebrity who is universally appealing and likable across age and gender (Lunardo et al., 2015).

5.3 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORY AND PRACTICE

5.3.1 Implications for theory This study offers seven theoretical contributions, which are described in detail henceforth. First, as described in detail in Chapter 2, using relevant theoretical underpinnings, this study proposed anthropomorphized spokescharacter appeal as a new construct and liking, cuteness, nostalgia, and humour as its constituents. Further, this study empirically confirmed the proposed attributes as comprising spokescharacter appeal and found it as a single dimension construct, when applied to the environmental marketing context. Lunardo et al. (2015) highlighted that even though there is much literature available on celebrity endorsements, very few research studies have investigated the dimensions that comprise celebrity endorser appeal. In response to this research gap, this study contributes to the celebrity endorsement area by proposing constituents of anthropomorphized spokescharacter’s appeal.

Second, the study proposed and empirically showed that anthropomorphized spokescharacters can enhance recycling intentions of consumers, thus opening a new research area for social and environmental marketers. Whereas past research studies have explored the appropriateness and influence of human celebrities on attitudes and behavioural intentions in social marketing contexts (Martín & Crespo, 2013; Samman et al., 2009; Wheeler, 2009), this study is probably the first one to empirically show

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the effectiveness of anthropomorphized spokescharacters as endorsers in environmental marketing. It also suggested a model to enhance recycling intentions by manipulating anthropomorphic spokescharacters’ appeal and expertise.

Third, this study empirically confirmed the predictions of the matchup hypothesis using anthropomorphized spokescharacters in an environmental marketing context. Specifically, it was found that spokescharacter attractiveness reduced its trustworthiness and recycling intentions. Kamins (1990) first reported the matchup effect using human celebrity endorsers by showing that attractive endorsers reduced advertising effectiveness when endorsing attractiveness unrelated products. Koernig and Page (2002) also reported similar results. Further, past research has also shown that attractiveness is not a suitable dimension to evaluate endorser effectiveness in the social marketing context (Martín & Crespo, 2013; Wheeler, 2009) and this study confirmed this finding using anthropomorphized spokescharacters as opposed to the human celebrities used by past studies. Pornpitakpan (2004) suggested that apart from the three-source effectiveness dimension, liking for the source should be included as a component to evaluate source effectiveness. This study has empirically shown that liking (as part of appeal) can indeed significantly influence recycling intentions, independently from expertise and trustworthiness. Instead of attractiveness, this study proposes spokescharacter’s appeal as an alternate source effectiveness dimension, which makes sense given that anthropomorphized spokescharacters are designed to look cute and are perceived as humorous.

Fourth, this study has also shown that marketers can enhance perceived trustworthiness and relevancy of spokescharacters by modifying appeal and expertise while selecting existing or designing new spokescharacters. Whereas Garretson and Niedrich (2004) showed that nostalgia and expertise enhance spokescharacter’s trustworthiness in a commercial marketing context, this study extends their findings by showing liking, cuteness, and humour as additional attributes marketers can use to enhance the perceived trustworthiness in an environmental marketing context. Similarly, while past studies have shown that liking (Fleck et al., 2012) and expertise (Till & Busler, 2000) can enhance the perceived fit between the celebrity and endorsed brand, this study found that cuteness, nostalgia, and humour associated with an anthropomorphized spokescharacter can also positively influence its fit as endorser for an environmental cause such as recycling. In his study, Wheeler (2009) reported that

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the effect of perceived fit (i.e., relevancy) on intention to donate money and volunteer time is mediated through source credibility. In this study, it was found that relevancy exerted both direct and indirect effects on behavioural intentions.

Fifth, product involvement has been shown to moderate the effects of celebrity endorsers on brand attitude and purchase intentions, such that under a low involvement condition, peripheral cues such as anthropomorphized spokescharacters should be more effective in influencing attitudes and intentions of consumers than under a high involved condition (Cacioppo & Petty, 1984; Petty et al., 1983; Yoon & Tinkham, 2013). This study confirmed the ELM predictions in the environmental marketing context, using anthropomorphized spokescharacters as peripheral cues in communication. Even though these spokescharacters are believed to be universally liked across age and gender (Jenkin et al., 2014; Phillips et al., 2019), their effectiveness as endorser for a recycling cause is limited to only low involved consumers.

Sixth, a spokescharacter’s perceived expertise emerged as the most important source of the effectiveness dimension in an environmental marketing context, driving not only its trustworthiness but also relevancy. Even for high involved participants who were not influenced by other spokescharacter’s attributes, expertise predicted recycling intentions. Whereas trustworthiness was believed to be the most important trait for human celebrity endorsements in the social marketing context (Martín & Crespo, 2013; Samman et al., 2009; Wheeler, 2009), this study found that expertise was most important for anthropomorphized spokescharacters. Therefore, environmental marketers can depict their newly created spokescharacters as environmental experts (e.g., depiction in advertisements by giving suitable personality) to further enhance the recycling intentions of both highly involved and less involved consumers.

Finally, as reviewed in detail earlier in Chapter 2, even though the effects of cuteness, nostalgia, and humour appeals on prosocial and environmental behaviour have been investigated separately by previous researchers, this study demonstrates the joint influence of these appeals on pro-environmental behaviour. Kaltenbacher and Drews (2020) highlighted an important gap in using humour in environmental communication, i.e., the role of a humorous messenger. This study attempted to fill that gap, as anthropomorphized spokescharacter is a type of humorous messenger.

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Wang et al. (2017) asserted that no research has been conducted to explore the influence of using cute appeals in social messages, hence this study will add to this emergent area as well. Eisend (2009) summarized the influence of humour on brand attitude for hedonic and functional goods, however the use of humour in social and environmental marketing has not been researched adequately (Borden & Suggs, 2019; Jäger & Eisend, 2013) and this research study will add to the limited literature available in this area. Zhou et al. (2012) suggested a future research area in which nostalgia may be used in environmental conservation appeals. They suggested that such a strategy may work if threats to humans or other species are highlighted. This research answers their call by exploring the use of anthropomorphized spokescharacters in environmental appeal to prime feelings of nostalgia, which can engender empathy and higher intentions to act pro-environmentally.

5.3.2 Implications for practice This study offers several practical contributions, which are described in detail in this section. First, this study provides some guidance to the brand managers of firms who own anthropomorphized characters to modify their appearance and enhance their appeal. For instance, cuteness can be enhanced by tweaking the appearance of character (i.e., invoking baby-schema) or giving a playful and fun personality (i.e., enhancing whimsicality) to the character through advertisements. Similarly, invoking nostalgia through advertisements, giving humorous personality, and using relevant props with the character (e.g., a car for Michelin Man, or a cereal bowl with Tony the Tiger) can all work in tandem to enhance character’s appeal. Next, the findings of this study provide environmental marketers with a safer option to use to reach a wider audience i.e., by using anthropomorphic spokescharacters instead of human celebrities. The findings also give insights to select appropriate existing anthropomorphized spokescharacters or to design new appealing anthropomorphized spokescharacters for their campaigns. For example, they should select ones with high ratings on liking, cuteness, nostalgia engendered, and humour as well as expertise by pretesting the shortlisted characters with a small sample of the target audience. If they opt to design a new spokescharacter, it should be given a cute and humorous appearance, some relevant props, and be depicted as an expert of the cause (a knowledgeable recycler for instance). Human celebrity’s appeal is driven by their physical appearance, talent, in-field performance, and personality (Lunardo et al.,

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2015; Stever, 1991), none of which can be controlled by marketers. The findings of this study suggest that in the case of anthropomorphic spokescharacters, environmental marketers can manipulate their appeal (at least for new spokescharacters) by giving them a highly cute, likable, and humorous look. As it was found that different spokescharacters may have different influence on attitudes and intentions of males and females, it is advised that environmental marketers must pre-test with a small sample of target audience to select one that is equally effective for both genders, or not select those ones for which difference in appeal or other attributes’ ratings are significantly diverse.

Third, this study presents an alternate communication strategy to influence recycling intentions of low involved consumers by using cuteness, humour, and nostalgia appeals together. Environmental marketers will benefit by using findings of this study to encourage recycling among consumers who are less concerned about environmental issues. There are some suggestions for depiction of spokescharacter in communication, for instance, as a consumer who is an expert recycler or a well-known researcher in an environmental field. As participants in this study gave high importance to their social connections’ (i.e., family and friends) views on their recycling behaviour (mean score on subjective norms across eight groups is 5.61 out of 7), this suggests that if consumers perceive anthropomorphic spokescharacters used as endorsers in recycling messages as part of their social group (e.g., as a well-wisher, friend, or local community member), their recycling appeal will have more influence and will be taken seriously. One implication of this finding for environmental marketers is to depict the anthropomorphized character as a friend or local community member in recycling messages, especially when using their newly developed spokescharacters.

Next, the spokescharacters used in this study were considered moderately fit to endorse environmental issues like recycling. All the spokescharacters used in the study were existing brand spokescharacters of commercial entities whose appearance cannot be changed by environmental marketers. However, this study has shown that environmental marketers can enhance the relevancy or fit of newly designed anthropomorphic characters by giving them cute, humorous appearance, using relevant props, and depicting them as environmental experts.

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Fifth, brand managers of firms who own popular brand spokescharacters (such as M&M characters, Tony the Tiger, or Michelin Man) may associate with environmental causes such as promoting recycling as part of their corporate environmental responsibility, which may augment their own brand image (Hosany et al., 2013; Zhang et al., 2020). They can enter into alliance with environmental organizations, such as World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace, and lend these spokescharacters as endorsers to promote environmental causes and for fund-raising. A future study can explore how consumers respond to such association.

Further, government departments such as environment and science, and city councils, may use existing spokescharacters to encourage recycling among citizens by developing an advertisement campaign that features anthropomorphic spokescharacters as spokespersons. The finding of this study can also guide them to develop their own appealing spokescharacters by giving them a cute, humorous appearance and depicting them as expert on recycling.

Seventh, even though not directly tested in the study, the positive influence of anthropomorphic spokescharacters on attitudes and behaviours of children is well researched and hence, brand managers of firms like Kellogg’s or Mars Inc. can tie-up with schools to run a MPR (marketing public relations) campaign which can sensitize children and even parents towards recycling cause and also promote their products and corporate image. A future research can use a field study to see impact of using brand spokescharacters for educating children on recycling. Also, anthropomorphic characters offer a lot of product merchandising opportunities, such as with Mickey Mouse and Hello Kitty, among others (Walker, 2008). Environmental marketers can launch spokescharacters’ merchandise such as soft toys, t-shirts, mugs, posters, and other souvenirs which will further enhance their appeal, make them more effective communicators, and raise funds for NGOs through royalty (Smith, 1956; Wohlfeil et al., 2019).

A number of studies has shown that waste recycling led to considerable energy savings as well as decrease greenhouse gas emissions in different countries such as Brazil (de Oliveira Simonetto et al., 2013; Lino et al., 2010), Japan (Seike et al., 2018) and Nigeria (Ayodele et al., 2018; Seike et al., 2018). This study’s finding suggests that by enhancing recycling intentions and hence behaviour, anthropomorphic

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spokescharacters can contribute to energy conservation as well as decrease in greenhouse gas emissions also.

Table 5.2 summarizes the research gap identified for this study, and contribution to theory and practice for each gap.

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Table 5.2 Research gap, and contribution to theory and practice

Research gap identified Contribution to theory Contribution to practice

Prior research has explored human This study empirically showed that a To make them more appealing, organizations celebrities’ and animal species’ appeal spokescharacter’s liking, cuteness, humour, who own the anthropomorphic spokescharacters (Lunardo et al. 2015; Stever 1991; Wohlfeil, and nostalgia constitute its appeal. It was can modify their physical appearance and also Patterson and Gould 2019; Macdonald et al. further shown that appeal is a single give personality traits, which can be depicted 2015, 2017) but not anthropomorphized brand dimension construct. Hence, a new through advertising. So, making a character spokescharacter’s appeal. construct has been proposed to measure cuter and more humorous by changing effectiveness of anthropomorphized appearance or giving fun personality. This study attempted to explore constituents characters. of anthropomorphized brand Managers of both for-profit and non-profit spokescharacter’s appeal and its underlying organizations who do not own a character can structure (single dimension or multi- design new appealing characters based on the dimension). findings of this study.

Environmental marketers can select highly appealing spokescharacters based on their appearance and perceived highly expert. Prior research has explored the effectiveness This study developed and tested a This study showed that anthropomorphized of using human celebrities in social marketing conceptual framework to enhance brand spokescharacters can be effective as and environmental marketing contexts recycling intentions of consumers by using endorsers in environmental communication. (Anderson 2011; Boykoff & Goodman 2009; anthropomorphized spokescharacters. Social marketers can explore the use of these Duthie et al. 2017; Martin & Crespo, 2013, characters as an alternate strategy to using Wheeler, 2009) but no study has tried to It opens up a new area of research for human celebrities. explore the effectiveness of created social marketing researchers. anthropomorphic characters.

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The findings showed that by manipulating This study offered justification to use brand spokescharacter’s appeal and expertise, its spokescharacters for environmental relevancy and trustworthiness can be marketing and attempted to explore whether increased. As a result, affective attitude these characters can be effective endorsers or towards recycling and recycling intentions not. can be enhanced.

Environmental communication predominantly Joint effects of humour, cuteness, and Environmental marketers can use uses guilt and fear appeals to drive behaviour nostalgia appeal operating via anthropomorphized spokescharacters in their changes (Jager and Eisend, 2013; Jiménez spokescharacter’s appeal positively communication particularly to engage low and Yang 2008). Effects of humour, cute, and influenced affective attitude towards involved consumers. nostalgic appeals in environmental recycling indirectly through its This presents an alternate strategy from using communication have been researched trustworthiness, and both directly and fear and guilt appeals or using cuteness, separately (Wang et al., 2017, Zhou et al., indirectly influenced recycling intentions. humour, and nostalgic appeals separately. 2012, Jager and Eisend, 2013) but still This suggests an alternative message sufficient research has not been done. strategy for environmental communication.

This study explored the joint application of Low involved consumers were found to be cute, humour, and nostalgic appeals by using more positively influenced by presence of anthropomorphic brand spokescharacters in the anthropomorphized spokescharacters. environmental communication. Source effectiveness dimensions i.e., This study showed that attractiveness This study has shown that spokescharacter’s trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness dimension is not suitable in environmental appeal and expertise can enhance perceived fit have been used mainly to evaluate human marketing context, confirming matchup as well as trustworthiness of the character. That celebrities’ endorsement effectiveness in hypothesis using anthropomorphized is, it is possible for marketers to modify the fit commercial advertising (Amos et al., 2008), spokescharacters in environmental and trustworthiness of the spokescharacter in an but their use for evaluating marketing context. Apart from expertise, environmental marketing context. By modifying anthropomorphized spokescharacters’ appeal emerged as an important antecedent appeal through appearance, environmental marketers can design new or select existing

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effectiveness in environmental marketing has of trustworthiness, influencing it directly characters, which may appear more relevant to been quite limited. and indirectly through perceived fit. promote the cause and be perceived more trustworthy, which will enhance message This study explored how spokescharacter’s Appeal is a new antecedent of effectiveness. appeal, together with its expertise and trustworthiness apart from earlier attractiveness, influences its relevancy and established ones like attractiveness, trustworthiness, and finally recycling attitude expertise, and relevancy. and intentions.

Using human celebrities, researchers have The predictions of ELM were confirmed in Environmental marketers can motivate those confirmed Elaboration Likelihood Model’s an environmental marketing context, i.e., consumers to recycle more who are less (ELM) predictions, that peripheral cues such for low involved participants, the attributes involved with it, i.e., who do not consider as attractive spokespersons and humour are of anthropomorphized spokescharacters recycling important or personally value it. more effective to influence attitudes and such as appeal, trustworthiness and intentions of low involved consumers (Petty relevancy exerted significant influence on et al., 1983; Yoon & Tinkham, 2013). recycling intentions, but not for highly However, no study used anthropomorphized involved participants. spokescharacters to confirm ELM’s prediction in environmental marketing context.

This study empirically tested ELM’s predictions using anthropomorphized spokescharacters in environmental marketing context.

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5.4 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

As with any research, this study contains several limitations. First, the data for this study was collected online through Amazon’s MTurk platform. Even though an attention request was made at the beginning of the survey and attention check questions were included, it is quite possible that some participants attempted the questions non-seriously or while doing multiple tasks. Second, a recent study on using MTurk for conducting social science research has pointed out concerns about the validity of conclusions (Aguinis et al., 2020). This may cast some doubts on the findings of this study, as data was collected through MTurk. Third, this study used a simple recycling poster designed by a professional designer under a lab setting, which makes generalizability to real world behaviour difficult. The poster may have appeared unrealistic to participants, which could have impacted their responses. Next, the use of well-known brand spokescharacters such as Tony the Tiger may have invoked pre- existing emotions, or perceptions in consumers which may influence the participants responses. Future research may control of these associations. (The researcher thanks anonymous examiner for giving this input).

Fifth, participants were exposed to the recycling poster for a very brief period of time, around 20 seconds, which may not be enough time for the effect of spokescharacter endorser to materialize. Further, this study analysed the self-reported recycling intentions of consumers, which may not be reflective of their actual recycling behaviour. Next, the wording of the question on recycling intention may have confounded the effect of anthropomorphized spokescharacters on recycling intention with attitude towards the message, which was not captured in the study. Eighth, as the study was conducted with U.S. participants using recycling as an environmental cause, the findings are not generalizable to other cultural contexts and for other environmental issues such as water or energy conservation. Also, due to limited sample size per spokescharacter, mediation-moderation analysis across different types of spokescharacters was not possible. Finally, some assumptions and requirements for conducting multivariate analysis were not met in this study, such as minimum 20 cases per cell in two-way MANCOVA, normal distribution of dependent variables, linear association between covariates and dependent variables for MANCOVA, and smaller sample size for multigroup analysis using SEM, which may cast doubt on the reported findings.

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5.5 FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

5.5.1 Future research directions It is this study’s intention that the present research work stimulates discussions and future research opportunities for academics. To achieve this, several future research directions are offered. First, future research can empirically test the validity and reliability of the proposed conceptual framework by using different environmental causes such as water conservation, energy conservation, and using public transport to name a few. Second, the proposed framework may also be tested in different social marketing contexts like anti-smoking campaigns, promotion of safe sex, over- speeding, and drunken driving, among others. Third, as prevalence of celebrity endorsement in advertising varies among nations (Praet, 2008), researchers can test the validity of the framework in different cultural contexts. Fourth, attractiveness as measured by attributes of Ohanian’s (1990) attractiveness dimension (i.e., ‘attractive’, ‘classy’, ‘beautiful’, ‘elegant’, and ‘sexy’), may not be suitable for an anthropomorphized spokescharacter; hence, researchers can explore specific attributes for anthropomorphized spokescharacter attractiveness through exploratory research, because using Ohanian’s (1990) attractiveness items is not suitable in a social marketing context (Wheeler, 2009).

Fifth, researchers can use experimental designs to explore whether a particular type of spokescharacter (i.e., animal, human, mythical, or product personified) is more effective as an environmental cause endorser. Sixth, researchers can design and empirically test the effectiveness of new anthropomorphized spokescharacters by experimentally manipulating different attributes of appeal, such as cuteness or humour as identified in this study. Seventh, since gender influences a human celebrity’s perceived credibility (Schartel Dunn & Nisbett, 2020), future studies can empirically test gender effects on spokescharacter credibility in environmental contexts. Eighth, future research can also explore Aaker’s (1997) brand personality dimensions as constituents of spokescharacter appeal as some researchers have studied their impact on source effectiveness dimensions(Kyung et al., 2010) and on brand trust and attitude, and intention to act (Folse et al., 2012).

Ninth, even though the model in this study has been developed for anthropomorphized spokescharacters, future studies can test the model using human celebrities, as it will be interesting to know how liking, cuteness, humour, and

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nostalgia will play a role in driving their appeal and influence on recycling intentions. Tenth, Kronrod et al. (2012) empirically showed that for consumers who perceive environmental issues as highly important, an assertive message tone works better (e.g., ‘everyone must recycle’) as against a non-assertive message tone (e.g., ‘everyone should recycle’) for those who consider such issues as less important. Future research may test whether using an assertive versus non-assertive message is equally effective when an anthropomorphized spokescharacter is used as an endorser instead of a human spokesperson. Even though this study posited the advantages of using anthropomorphized spokescharacters over human spokespersons in environmental marketing, future studies can empirically test this hypothesis by using an experimental design. Finally, more field studies may be used to confirm the efficacy of using anthropomorphized spokescharacters to promote recycling. As Hansmann et al. (2009) found, even though humorous recycling slogans were liked and considered more effective, they failed to produce desirable results when actually implemented in a field study.

5.5.2 Conclusions Environmental issues pose real dangers to mankind, and they mostly originate from unsustainable human behaviours. Recycling is a promising way to minimize a host of environmental problems associated with the ever-intensifying issue of managing municipal solid waste and landfill. This study looked at how environmental communication can be made more effective with reference to recycling as the environmental cause. Whereas fear and guilt appeals have been extensively used by social and environmental marketers to drive behaviour change, this study proposed and tested effectiveness by means of cuteness, humour, and nostalgia appeals in environmental communication by using anthropomorphized spokescharacters as endorsers.

Specifically, this study set out to find answers to two questions raised as a result of a comprehensive review of extant literature. Firstly, can anthropomorphized brand spokescharacters be an effective endorser for recycling cause? Secondly, what constitutes anthropomorphized spokescharacter appeal?

To answer these questions, a conceptual framework was developed and tested using U.S. sample data drawn from the MTurk platform. The findings of the study suggested that by using appropriate anthropomorphized spokescharacters in a

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recycling message, consumers’ recycling intentions can be enhanced. The conceptual framework was more predictive of recycling intentions for consumers who are less involved with recycling, a finding that is encouraging for environmental marketers. This study also proposed the attributes of anthropomorphized spokescharacter’s appeal and showed that by manipulating different spokescharacter’s attributes, recycling intentions of consumers can be enhanced. As using anthropomorphized spokescharacters as endorsers in environmental communication is a relatively new idea, this area of inquiry opens up many future research opportunities as well. As a result, a number of research directions are presented, on which researchers working in the field of social and environmental marketing may focus.

It is the belief and desire of this researcher that in the near future, environmental marketers, NGOs, and government departments will start using existing anthropomorphized spokescharacters in their communication or explore creating their own ones, to rally a wider audience around vital environmental cause. Providing one such strategy, this study contends that likable, cute, and humorous spokescharacters may convince consumers to recycle more.

So next time when someone, ignorant or not overly concerned about environmental issues, is about to throw a recyclable cup in a trash bin, a cute, smiling character may appeal to them: ‘Recycle today for a better tomorrow’.

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Appendices

Appendix A

List of brand spokescharacters

S.No. Name of Owner Type of Image character company spokescharacter

1 Tony the Tiger Kellogg’s Animal

2 Geico Gecko Geico Animal

3 Sonny the Cocoa Puffs Animal Cuckoo Bird

4 Quicky Nestle Animal

5 The Laughing Fromageries Animal Cow Bel

6 Charlie the StarKist Animal Tuna

7 Finn Pepperidge Animal Farm (Campbell Soup Company)

Appendices 187

8 Coco the Kellogg’s Animal Monkey

9 Mr. Clean Procter & Mythical Gamble

10 Lucky Charms General Mythical Mills

11 Jolly Green B&G Foods Mythical Giant

12 The roaming Travelocity Mythical Gnome

13 Count Chocula General Mythical Mills

14 Ernest Ferrero SpA Mythical

15 Michelin Man Michelin Product personified Tyre company

188 Appendices

16 Poppin' Fresh Pillsbury Product personified Company

17 Mr. Peanut Kraft Heinz Product personified

18 Henry Numatic Product personified International

19 M&M Mars, Inc. Product personified spokescandies

20 M&M Mars, Inc. Product personified spokescandies

Appendices 189

Appendix B

Pre-test Questionnaire

Q1 Are you atleast 18 years old?

o Yes

o No

Please read this information before commencing the survey! The following survey involves answering few questions about brand spokescharacters (also known as brand mascots).

Brand spokescharacter/mascot is a fictional, cartoon animated character that is created by companies for the promotion of a brand or product. It is depicted as having human-like qualities. For example, one of the most famous brand mascots is Ronald McDonald, the clown promoting McDonald's restaurants.

Endorser is someone (generally a well-known personality) who appears in an advertisement and expresses support for advertised product, service, idea or cause.

A recycling message is an appeal to general public to recycle their waste more.

You will be asked to evaluate different brand mascots/spokescharacters on the suitability to be an endorser for recycling cause, as depicted in the above example.

There are no 'right' or 'wrong' answers to the questions. Your response will be used for designing the main study questions. So please share your honest opinions. Thank You!

Appendices 191

Q2 Indicate your level of familiarity with the following brand spokescharacters/mascots. Not Very familiar much at all familiar

o o o o o o o

192 Appendices

Q3 Regardless of whether you are familiar with this spokescharacter or not, how humorous/funny do you find its appearance? Not Very humorous/funny humorous/funny at all

o o o o o o o

Appendices 193

Q4 How cute do you find the following brand mascots/spokescharacters? Not cute Very

at all cute

o o o o o o o

194 Appendices

Q5 I think the use of the following brand mascot/spokescharacter as an endorser in a recycling message (a message appealing people to recycle their waste more) is: Neither Extremely Moderately Slightly appropriate Slightly Moderately Extremely inappropriate inappropriate inappropriate nor appropriate appropriate appropriate inappropriate

o o o o o o o

Appendices 195

Q6 Indicate your level of agreement/disagreement with the following statement.

I think the shown brand mascot/spokescharacter will be persuasive (convincing) as an endorser in a recycling message (urging people to recycle). Neither Strongly Somewhat agree Somewhat Strongly Disagree Agree disagree disagree nor agree agree disagree

o o o o o o o

196 Appendices

Q7 Indicate your level of familiarity with the following brand spokescharacters/mascots. Very Not at all much familiar familiar

o o o o o o o

Appendices 197

Q8 Regardless of whether you are familiar with this spokescharacter or not, how humorous/funny do you find its appearance? Not at all Very

humorous/funny humorous/funny

o o o o o o o

198 Appendices

Q9 How cute do you find the following brand mascots/spokescharacters? Not at Very

all cute cute

o o o o o o o

Appendices 199

Q10 I think the use of the following brand mascot/spokescharacter as an endorser in a recycling message (a message appealing people to recycle their waste more) is: Neither Extremely Moderately Slightly appropriate Slightly Moderately Extremely inappropriate inappropriate inappropriate nor appropriate appropriate appropriate inappropriate

o o o o o o o

200 Appendices

Q11 Indicate your level of agreement/disagreement with the following statement. I think the shown brand mascot/spokescharacter will be persuasive (convincing) as an endorser in a recycling message (urging people to recycle). Neither Strongly Somewhat agree Somewhat Strongly Disagree Agree disagree disagree nor agree agree disagree

o o o o o o o

Appendices 201

Q12 Indicate your level of familiarity with the following brand spokescharacters/mascots. Very Not at all much Familiar familiar

o o o o o o o

Q13 Regardless of whether you are familiar with this spokescharacter or not, how humorous/funny do you find its appearance? Not Very humorous/funny humorous/funny at all

o o o o o o o

202 Appendices

Q14 How cute do you find the following brand mascots/spokescharacters? Not cute Very

at all cute

o o o o o o o

Appendices 203

Q15 I think the use of the following brand mascot/spokescharacter as an endorser in a recycling message (a message appealing people to recycle their waste more) is:

Neither Extremely Moderately Slightly appropriate Slightly Moderately Extremely inappropriate inappropriate inappropriate nor appropriate appropriate appropriate inappropriate

o o o o o o o

204 Appendices

Q16 Indicate your level of agreement/disagreement with the following statement. I think the shown brand mascot/spokescharacter will be persuasive (convincing) as an endorser in a recycling message (urging people to recycle). Neither Strongly Somewhat agree Somewhat Strongly Disagree Agree disagree disagree nor agree agree disagree

o o o o o o o

Q19 Indicate your gender.

o Male

o Female

o Other

o Prefer not to answer

Appendices 205

Appendix C

Main study Questionnaire

Q1 Are you atleast 18 years old?

o Yes

o No

Q2 We are conducting an academic study and the findings of this project will be used to make some important decisions. Therefore, we request you to pay full, undivided attention and answer the survey with full honesty. At this point, please locate a quiet place, switch off music or TV, or refrain from doing any other activities. Are you ready to respond to the survey?

o Yes, I am ready.

Q3 Indicate your level of disagreement/agreement with the following statements.

Statement Strongly Strongly disagree D SD NAND SA A agree

I am well informed about ecological issues affecting the planet earth. I am informed about the most important issues that affect environment. I understand well enough what is being said about the deterioration of nature. I know what the main ecological problems are. In general, I know how not to damage the ecosystem. In general, I know what is good and what is bad for the environment. D: Disagree; SD: Strongly disagree; NAND: Neither agree nor disagree; SA: Strongly agree; A: Agree

Q4 Recycling means

206 Appendices

Nothing        A lot to to me me

Q5 For me, recycling is

Unimportant        Important

Q6 How much of your waste you have recycled in the last month?

None of        All of it it

Q7 How often did you recycle your waste during the last month?

Never        Always

Q8 Please indicate how committed you are towards recycling.

Not at        Very all much

Q9 Indicate your level of disagreement/agreement with following statements.

Statement Strongly Strongly D SD NAND SA A disagree agree There are plenty of opportunities for me to engage in recycling in next 4 weeks. It will be easy for me to engage in recycling during the next 4 weeks. D: Disagree; SD: Strongly disagree; NAND: Neither agree nor disagree; SA: Strongly agree; A: Agree

Q10 Indicate your level of disagreement/agreement with following statements.

Appendices 207

Statement Strongly Strongly D SD NAND SA A disagree agree Most of my friends think that recycling is a good thing to do. Most people who are important to me want me to engage in recycling. Most of my family think that recycling is a good thing to do. D: Disagree; SD: Strongly disagree; NAND: Neither agree nor disagree; SA: Strongly agree; A: Agree

Q11 How familiar you are with the following brand mascot/spokescharacter.

Not        Quite familiar familiar at all

Q12 Based on your familiarity with this brand mascot/spokescharacter, indicate your level of disagreement/agreement with the following. I think that the shown spokescharacter is:

Statement Strongly Strongly D SD NAND SA A disagree agree Helpful Caring Wise Friendly Cheerful Select Agree Trendy Exciting Cool Young D: Disagree; SD: Strongly disagree; NAND: Neither agree nor disagree; SA: Strongly agree; A: Agree

Q13 Indicate your level of liking towards the following brand mascot/spokescharacter.

Strongly        Strongly dislike like it it

Q14 Indicate your level of disagreement/agreement with the following statements.

208 Appendices

Statement Strongly Strongly D SD NAND SA A disagree agree This spokescharacter makes me think back to events that occurred when I was younger. This spokescharacter reminds me of positive experiences from the past. When I see this spokescharacter, it makes me remember different happy moments in my life. This spokescharacter makes me think of fond memories. D: Disagree; SD: Strongly disagree; NAND: Neither agree nor disagree; SA: Strongly agree; A: Agree

Q15 Please indicate how cute you find the brand mascot/spokescharacter.

Not cute        Extremely at all cute

Q16 How humorous do you find this brand mascot/spokescharacter?

Not        Very humorous humorous at all

Q17 How funny do you find this brand mascot/spokescharacter?

Not funny        Very at all funny

Q18 How amusing you find this brand mascot/spokescharacter?

Not        Very amusing at amusing all

Q19 Please indicate how appealing you find the brand mascot/spokescharacter.

Not        Very appealing appealing at all

Q20 Please see this recycling poster/appeal carefully and answer the questions that follow.

Appendices 209

Six different versions of this recycling message with different spokescharacter as endorser was shown to different groups. One group saw message with recycling logo and did not answered any spokescharacters’ related question.

Q21 Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the following attributes.

Undependable        Dependable Insincere        Sincere Unreliable        Reliable Untrustworthy        Trustworthy Dishonest        Honest

Q22 Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the following attributes.

Unattractive        Attractive Not classy        Classy Ugly        Handsome Plain        Elegant Not sexy        Sexy

Q23 Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the following attributes.

Not an expert        Expert Inexperienced        Experienced Unknowledgeable        Knowledgeable Unqualified        Qualified Unskilled        Skilled

210 Appendices

Q24 Please indicate your level of disagreement/agreement with the following statements.

Statement Strongly Strongly D SD NAND SA A disagree agree It makes sense for this brand spokescharacter to be featured in the recycling message. I think that pairing this brand spokescharacter with the recycling cause is appropriate. Please select somewhat agree. I think that this brand spokescharacter is relevant as endorser for the recycling message. Together, this brand spokescharacter and the recycling message represents a very good fit. D: Disagree; SD: Strongly disagree; NAND: Neither agree nor disagree; SA: Strongly agree; A: Agree

Q25 Please describe your overall feelings towards recycling.

Not        Pleasurable Pleasurable Not        Desirable desirable Dislikeable        likable

Q26 Please describe what you think about recycling.

Foolish        Wise Useless        Useful Harmful        Beneficial Worthless        Valuable Not        Responsible responsible

Q27 Please indicate your level of disagreement/agreement with the following statements.

Appendices 211

Statement Not at Very

all much To what extent are you willing to recycle after seeing this recycling poster/appeal in next 4 weeks? How likely are you to recycle after seeing this recycling poster/appeal in the next 4 weeks? To what extent does this recycling poster/appeal motivate you to recycle in next 4 weeks?

Q28 Indicate your gender.

o Male

o Female

o Other

o Prefer not to answer

Q29 In which state do you currently reside?

▼ Alabama (1) ... I do not reside in the United States (53)

Q30 Enter your age in years.

______

212 Appendices

Q31 What is the highest level of school you have completed or the highest degree you have received?

o Less than high school degree

o High school graduate (high school diploma or equivalent including GED)

o Some college but no degree

o Associate degree in college (2-year)

o Bachelor's degree in college (4-year)

o Master's degree

o Doctoral degree

o Professional degree (JD, MD)

Q32 In which category does your household income falls (figures in annual household income in US$)

o Less than $20,000

o $20,000 - $44,999

o $45,000 - $139,999

o $140,000 - $149,999

o $150,000 - $199,999

o $200,000+

o Prefer not to answer

Q33 Please enter your MTurk ID below. (It is essential to enter your ID to claim credit for this task)

______

Appendices 213

Appendix D

Multiple figures and tables (Appendix D-a to n)

(a) Participants’ age

(b) Participants’ gender

214 Appendices

(d) Variation in spokescharacter familiarity by type

Appendices 215

216 Appendices

Appendices 217

(e) Spokescharacters’ attributes by type

(f) Correlation between spokescharacters’ attributes

218 Appendices

(g) Spokescharacter’s perceived trustworthiness, attractiveness, expertise, and relevancy

(h) Mean recycling attitudes and intentions

(i) Normality tests for recycling attitudes and intentions

Appendices 219

(j) Gender-wise variation in recycling attitudes and intentions

220 Appendices

(k) Box plots of different variables

Appendices 221

Correlations

Perceived Past Recycling Behavioural Control Subjective Norms Affective Attitude Cognitive Attitude Intention to Behaviour towards Recycling towards Recycling towards Recycling towards Recycling Recycle Kendall's tau_b Past Recycling Behaviour Correlation Coefficient 1.000 .464** .323** .382** .224** .417** Sig. (2-tailed) 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 Perceived Behavioural Correlation Coefficient .464** 1.000 .487** .361** .405** .438** Control towards Recycling Sig. (2-tailed) 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000

Subjective Norms towards Correlation Coefficient .323** .487** 1.000 .389** .415** .426** Recycling Sig. (2-tailed) 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). N = 468

(l) Correlations between covariates and dependent variables

(m) Skewness and Kurtosis for transformed dependent variables

222 Appendices

(n) Marginal means dependent variables: TWO way MANCOVA

Appendices 223

Appendix E

Spokescharacters’ attributes by type

224 Appendices

Appendices 225

Appendix F

Stem and leaf plots

For MANCOVA

Mahalanobis Distance Stem-and-Leaf Plot

Frequency Stem & Leaf

17.00 0 . 22233333444444444 55.00 0 . 5555555555666666666667777777777777778888888899999999999 62.00 1 . 00000000000011111111111122222223333333333333444444444444444444 62.00 1 . 55555555555555666666666777777777778888888888888999999999999999 57.00 2 . 000000001111111111111111222222223333333333333333444444444 54.00 2 . 555555555566666666777777777777777777888888888899999999 45.00 3 . 000000001111111111122222222222233333444444444 33.00 3 . 555555555555666777778888888899999 23.00 4 . 00011112222233333334444 15.00 4 . 555577788888899 3.00 5 . 124 11.00 5 . 55667778889 10.00 6 . 1112233444 19.00 Extremes (>=66)

Stem width: 10.00000 Each leaf: 1 case(s)

For SEM

Mahalanobis Distance Stem-and-Leaf Plot Frequency Stem & Leaf

1.00 0 . 4 8.00 0 . 66778888 19.00 1 . 0000011122334444444 35.00 1 . 55666666667777777788888888999999999 44.00 2 . 00000001111112222222222222333333333344444444 40.00 2 . 5555555555666666666666677778888888999999 41.00 3 . 00000000000011111111112222222222222333444 40.00 3 . 5555555555666666777777788888888899999999 23.00 4 . 00000000011111122333444 22.00 4 . 5555566666777777888999 14.00 5 . 00002333334444 9.00 5 . 666788999 8.00 6 . 00112244 10.00 6 . 5577889999 3.00 7 . 000 2.00 7 . 55 13.00 Extremes (>=77) Stem width: 10.00000 Each leaf: 1 case(s)

226 Appendices

Appendix G

Scatter Plots

Appendices 227

Appendix H Variable wise items used for conducting CFA

Item Scale Type Description Construct Spokescharacter 7-point Likert scale Indicate your level of liking towards the following brand Spokescharacter’s Liking mascot/spokescharacter. Appeal Strongly Dislike------Strongly Like Nostalgia 7-point Likert scale Average score of the 4 items described below: Spokescharacter’s (associated with 1. This spokescharacter makes me think back to events that occurred Appeal spokescharacter) when I was younger. 2. This spokescharacter reminds me of positive experiences from the past. 3. When I see this spokescharacter, it makes me remember different happy moments in my life. 4. This spokescharacter makes me think of fond memories. Strongly Disagree------Strongly Agree Spokescharacter 7-point semantic Please indicate how cute you find the brand mascot/spokescharacter. Spokescharacter’s Cuteness differential scale Not cute at all ------Extremely cute Appeal Humorous 7-point semantic Average of the three items mentioned below: Spokescharacter’s differential scale 1. How humorous you find this brand spokescharacter? Appeal 2. How funny you find this brand spokescharacter? 3. How amusing you find this spokescharacter? Not humorous/funny/amusing at all------Very humorous/funny/amusing Appealing 7-point semantic Please indicate how appealing you find the brand mascot/spokescharacter. Spokescharacter’s differential scale Not appealing at all ------Very appealing Appeal Dependable 7-point semantic Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the Trustworthiness differential scale following attributes. Undependable------Dependable

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Sincere 7-point semantic Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the Trustworthiness differential scale following attributes. Insincere------Sincere Reliable 7-point semantic Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the Trustworthiness differential scale following attributes. Unreliable------Reliable Trustworthy 7-point semantic Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the Trustworthiness differential scale following attributes. Untrustworthy------Trustworthy Honest 7-point semantic Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the Trustworthiness differential scale following attributes. Dishonest------Honest Expert 7-point semantic Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the Expertise differential scale following attributes. Not Expert------Expert Expert 7-point semantic Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the Expertise differential scale following attributes. Inexperienced------Experienced Expert 7-point semantic Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the Expertise differential scale following attributes. Unknowledgeable------Knowledgeable Expert 7-point semantic Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the Expertise differential scale following attributes. Unqualified------Qualified Expert 7-point semantic Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the Expertise differential scale following attributes. Unskilled------Skilled Attractive 7-point semantic Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the Attractiveness differential scale following attributes.

230 Appendices

Unattractive------Attractive Classy 7-point semantic Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the Attractiveness differential scale following attributes. Not classy------Classy Handsome 7-point semantic Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the Attractiveness differential scale following attributes. Ugly------Handsome* * The original scale has ‘Beautiful’ which was changed to ‘Handsome’ to match the male characters used in this study Elegant 7-point semantic Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the Attractiveness differential scale following attributes. Plain------Elegant Sexy 7-point semantic Rate the brand mascot/spokescharacter who appeared in the message on the Attractiveness differential scale following attributes. Not sexy------Sexy Pleasurable 7-point semantic Please describe your overall feelings towards recycling. Affective attitude differential scale Not pleasurable------Pleasurable towards recycling Desirable 7-point semantic Please describe your overall feelings towards recycling. Affective attitude differential scale Not desirable------Desirable towards recycling Likable 7-point semantic Please describe your overall feelings towards recycling. Affective attitude differential scale Dislikable------Likable towards recycling Wise 7-point semantic Please describe what you think about recycling. Cognitive attitude differential scale Foolish------Wise towards recycling Useful 7-point semantic Please describe what you think about recycling. Cognitive attitude differential scale Useless------Useful towards recycling Beneficial 7-point semantic Please describe what you think about recycling. Cognitive attitude differential scale Harmful------Beneficial towards recycling Valuable 7-point semantic Please describe what you think about recycling. Cognitive attitude differential scale Worthless------Valuable towards recycling

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Responsible 7-point semantic Please describe what you think about recycling. Cognitive attitude differential scale Not responsible------Responsible towards recycling Willing 7-point semantic To what extent are you willing to recycle after seeing this recycling Recycling differential scale poster/appeal in next 4 weeks? intention Not at all------Very Much Likely 7-point semantic How likely are you to recycle after seeing this recycling poster/appeal Recycling differential scale in the next 4 weeks? intention Not at all------Very Much Motivated 7-point semantic To what extent does this recycling poster/appeal motivate you to Recycling differential scale recycle in next 4 weeks? intention Not at all------Very Much Sensible 7-point Likert scale Please indicate your level of disagreement/agreement with the following Spokescharacter’s statements. relevancy It makes sense for this brand spokescharacter to be featured in the recycling message/appeal. Strongly Disagree------Strongly Agree

Appropriate 7-point Likert scale Please indicate your level of disagreement/agreement with the following Spokescharacter’s statements. relevancy I think that pairing this brand spokescharacter with the recycling cause is appropriate. Strongly Disagree------Strongly Agree

Relevant 7-point Likert scale Please indicate your level of disagreement/agreement with the following Spokescharacter’s statements. relevancy I think that this brand spokescharacter is relevant as endorser for the recycling message/appeal. Strongly Disagree------Strongly Agree

232 Appendices

Good fit 7-point Likert scale Please indicate your level of disagreement/agreement with the following Spokescharacter’s statements. relevancy Together, this brand spokescharacter and the recycling message represents a very good fit. Strongly Disagree------Strongly Agree

Appendices 233