The Use of Social Media in Sustainable Green Lifestyle Adoption: Social Media Influencers and Value Co-Creation

• Published in: Sustainability Vol. 16; no. 3; p. 1133
• Main Authors: Li, Jiaqi, Chiu, Dickson K. W., Ho, Kevin K. W., So, Stuart
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 29.01.2024
• Subjects: Climate change; Collaboration; Influencer marketing; Social media; Social networks; Social norms; Sustainable living; United Kingdom; China
• ISSN: 2071-1050; 2071-1050
• DOI: 10.3390/su16031133

Although prior research has highlighted the importance of social media in promotion and communication, a comprehensive framework to clarify how to use social media as a value co-creation platform to promote a green lifestyle has yet to be developed. This research aims to create and test a conceptual model for using social media as a value co-creation platform to encourage and motivate people to adopt a sustainable green lifestyle, besides mapping the process of green lifestyle adoption from the actual social media user behaviors. Two hundred and eighty-nine (289) subjects participated in an online survey in the first half of 2022, and the data collected have been analyzed using regression. The three key findings: (1) social media contact is positively associated with a sustainable green lifestyle (β = 0.234, p < 0.001); (2) value co-creation partially mediates the relationship between social media contact and a sustainable green lifestyle (indirect effect = 0.113, with Sobel test’s t-value = 5.762); and (3) surprisingly, the moderating role of social media influencers and social norms in the social media contact–sustainable green lifestyle relationship is not supported. In addition, this research supplied some reasonable and practical implementations that can help green agents and policymakers promote green behaviors.