Media Persuasion Shaping and Urban Residents’ Green Purchasing Behavior—Testing Moderated Mediation Effects

Attitude-behavior bias caused by the dissociation of altruistic and egoistic appeals has always been the main obstacle to green consumption. Therefore, based on the bounded rationality and bounded ethicality hypotheses, this paper constructed a theoretical model of the relationship between media persuasion and green purchasing behavior based on the improved goal-framing theory, expecting to solve the dilemma of “knowledge and action are not one”. The results show that media persuasion affects residents’ green purchasing behavior by activating perceived environmental responsibility（normative goal frames） and green perceived value（consumption value goal frames）; different shaping powers of media persuasion for different goal frames lead to different mediating effects; perceived seriousness of environmental problems negatively moderates the mediation model, thus discovering the mechanism of green consumption “desensitization”. This study reveals that media through activating normative goal frames and consumption value goal frames is an effective way to expand green purchase, but the “reversion effect” should be avoided when fear appeals tactic is adopted.