How Underdog Brand Biography Mitigates Consumer Skepticism Toward AIGC: Evidence from AI-Generated Agricultural-Product Advertisements

While AIGC can improve operational efficiency in marketing, it may also erode consumer trust owing to widespread skepticism toward AIGC. Therefore, this study examines agricultural product advertisements to explore the impact of Underdog Brand Biography (UBB) disclosure on consumers’ purchase intentions. It also investigates the mediating roles of cognitive trust and affective trust, as well as whether these effects differ across product-price levels and production-background conditions. We conducted three experiments to investigate these relationships. The data were analyzed using t-tests, analyses of variance, and moderated mediation models. The findings indicated that UBB disclosure significantly increases purchase intention and that this effect is mediated by both cognitive trust and affective trust. The indirect effects via both pathways differed across product-price levels: both were significant in the high-price condition, whereas in the low-price condition only the affective pathway remained significant. Additionally, both trust pathways were amplified in the cultivation-scene background condition relative to the plain background condition. Given that our samples were drawn from an online consumer panel, the present findings and their implications should be interpreted with respect to online consumer populations. These findings provide preliminary insights that may inform trust-based theories of AI disclosure and offer practical considerations for marketers designing AIGC advertising strategies.