AI for guilt, human for encouragement? The interaction effects of creator type and emotional appeal on green purchase intention

Green advertising inherently embeds emotional appeal to drive consumer responses. The proliferation of generative AI has shifted the creator from solely human-dominated to a hybrid landscape where AI-generated and human-generated coexist. Drawing on schema theory and attribution theory, this study investigates the interaction effects between creator type (AI-generated vs. human-generated) and emotional appeal (guilt vs. encouragement) in green advertising on consumers' green purchase intention. Three experiments, including two scenario-based lab experiments (one with a Chinese sample and one with an international English-speaking online sample) and a field experiment with actual purchase data from a live-streaming retailer, provide consistent support for our hypotheses. The results reveal that AI-generated guilt appeal elicits higher consumers’ green purchase intention than the human-generated one, mediated by reduced green moral pressure (a burden-alleviating pathway); conversely, human-generated encouragement appeal elicits higher purchase intention than the AI-generated one, mediated by green self-efficacy (a capacity-enhancing pathway). Furthermore, attribution focus moderates these interaction effects: behavioral attribution strengthens the advantage of AI-generated guilt appeal, whereas personal attribution strengthens the advantage of human-generated encouragement appeal. These findings move beyond the adversarial AI versus human comparison by demonstrating an interaction between disclosed creator type and emotional appeal in green advertising. The framework contributes to green advertising literature by integrating creator type and emotional appeal through an interaction logic, advancing schema theory and attribution theory in the green marketing context. The findings also provide actionable guidance for retailers on strategically collaborating AI and human in green advertising creation to maximize persuasive effectiveness.