The Personalization Paradox: How AI-Driven Green Marketing Can Advance Sustainable Consumption Without Triggering Consumer Skepticism

Harnessing AI for CSR Communication: Leveraging Credibility and Social Presence to Drive Responsible Consumption

While AI‐enabled corporate social responsibility (CSR) communications offer dynamic ways to engage consumers, growing skepticism toward algorithmic transparency and sincerity presents a critical barrier to green marketing. To address this research problem, this study integrates Signaling Theory, the Computers Are Social Actors paradigm, and the Stimulus‐Organism‐Response (S‐O‐R) model to evaluate how technological stimuli influence brand perceptions and drive responsible sustainable consumption behavior. Using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS‐SEM) to analyze data from 404 eligible consumers collected via mall intercepts in Vietnam, the empirical findings highlight two major conclusions. First, both credibility cues (information diagnosticity, algorithmic transparency) and social presence cues (perceived personalization, perceived human likeness) significantly enhance CSR authenticity and brand trust, with perceived personalization acting as the strongest driver. Second, perceived corporate AI opportunism selectively attenuates the impact of credibility and human likeness cues, leaving the robust influence of personalization unaffected. Ultimately, this framework equips managers to design transparent, empathetic digital campaigns that effectively mitigate algorithmic skepticism in green marketing.

Licensed to consume: how sustainable brand communications trigger moral licensing and what brands can do about it

Sustainable brand communications are widely assumed to motivate greener consumer behavior. Yet this assumption overlooks moral licensing, whereby prior virtuous actions can elevate moral self-concept and increase the likelihood of subsequent ethically questionable behavior. This paper argues that sustainable brands act as underexamined contributors that shape how consumers interpret their actions, thereby influencing the likelihood of subsequent behavioral responses. We develop a conceptual framework through synthesis of the behavioral science literature on moral self-licensing and the sustainable brand communications literature. Three contributions emerge. First, we identify four pathways through which sustainable brand communications may activate moral licensing: virtue attribution (framing purchase as a completed moral act), identity conferral (positioning consumers as sustainable persons), effort signaling (emphasizing sacrifice in sustainable choice), and absolution framing (carbon offsets and impact-neutralization messaging). Second, we develop a 2 × 2 typology of sustainable brand archetypes by expected licensing risk—the Virtue Vendor, Systemic Nudger, Identity Merchant, and Sacrifice Brand—highlighting a structural tension whereby stronger sustainable brand identities may, as a theoretical proposition rather than a demonstrated pattern, be particularly likely to generate cross-domain licensing effects (the “Patagonia paradox”). Third, we derive five design principles for licensing-resistant communications: avoid moral closure, decouple identity from purchase, make systemic demands explicit, suppress absolution signals, and actively suppress growth signals. Licensing-resistant design principles are in structural tension with conventional commercial growth logic, suggesting that voluntary communication reform may be insufficient without institutional arrangements (e.g., purpose trusts, B-Corp governance) that subordinate revenue growth to mission fidelity. While recent regulation (EU Directive 2024/825) addresses absolution framing, other licensing pathways remain unregulated. Sustainable brand communications should aim to open rather than close consumers’ moral accounts, framing each purchase as a partial contribution within an ongoing behavioral commitment.

GREEN PERSUASION: HOW AI GREEN NUDGES FOSTER CIRCULAR CONSUMPTION THROUGH CONSUMER MORAL ELEVATION UNDER THE BOUNDARY CONDITION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL REACTANCE

Beyond Green Persuasion: How AI Green Nudges Foster Circular Consumption through Consumer Moral Elevation Under the Boundary Condition of Psychological Reactance

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used to influence consumers toward sustainable choices, yet limited research explains the psychological mechanisms through which AI-enabled green nudges encourage circular consumption behaviour. Drawing on nudge theory, moral emotion perspectives, and psychological reactance theory, this study examines the effect of AI Green Nudges (AIGN) on Circular Consumption Behaviour (CC), the mediating role of Consumer Moral Elevation (CME), and the moderating role of Psychological Reactance (PR) in the direct AIGN–CC relationship. Data were collected from 400 consumers in Pakistan and analysed using Hayes’ PROCESS Model 5. The findings demonstrate that AI Green Nudges significantly enhance Consumer Moral Elevation (β = 0.4014, p < .001), while Consumer Moral Elevation positively influences Circular Consumption Behaviour (β = 0.4496, p < .001). AI Green Nudges also exert a significant positive direct effect on Circular Consumption Behaviour (β = 0.3815, p = .0026). Furthermore, Consumer Moral Elevation significantly mediates the relationship between AI Green Nudges and Circular Consumption Behaviour, with a positive indirect effect (β = 0.1805, 95% CI [0.1287, 0.2376]). Psychological Reactance significantly moderates the direct relationship between AI Green Nudges and Circular Consumption Behaviour (β = −0.0877, p = .0217), indicating that the positive influence of AI green nudges weakens as psychological reactance increases and becomes nonsignificant at high levels of reactance. The study contributes to sustainability and AI marketing research by identifying a moral-emotional mechanism and psychological boundary condition underlying AI-enabled green nudging. The findings also provide practical guidance for designing AI sustainability interventions that encourage circular consumption while preserving consumer autonomy. 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Towards Ethical AI-driven Marketing: A Framework for Explainability, Consumer Empowerment and Algorithmic Accountability in Emerging Markets

The diffusion of artificial intelligence into marketing practice has brought with it a fundamental governance problem: The most predictively capable AI systems are, typically, the least interpretable. This opacity creates information asymmetries between firms and consumers and complicates the ethical legitimacy of automated marketing decisions. This article argues that explainable AI (XAI) constitutes a necessary, and currently undertheorised, layer in the design of consumer-facing AI systems. Drawing on consumer trust theory, algorithmic decision-making research and marketing ethics literature, we develop the explainable marketing AI (XMAI) framework: a theoretical model proposing four interdependent components—algorithmic transparency, contextual relevance, consumer empowerment and ethical accountability—that jointly govern the deployment of explainable AI systems in marketing contexts. Four propositions link these components to consumer trust, perceived fairness, long-term engagement and consumer well-being. The framework is developed in the context of India and comparable developing economies, where rapid AI adoption in marketing is outpacing governance infrastructure, and where consumer digital literacy and institutional trust present conditions that differ from the Western settings in which most AI ethics frameworks have been formulated. The article contributes a theoretical foundation for researchers, practitioners and policymakers to close the gap between AI capability and accountability in marketing.

Breaking the Single Voice: Perceived AI Plurality as an Autonomy-Supportive Architecture for Ethical Marketplace Decisions

Results show that structuring ethical recommendations through a plural AI architecture enhances consumers’ self–brand connection and strengthens self-brand connection and purchase intentions, suggesting plurality can function as an equity-enhancing design feature.