소극적 관찰자에서 헌신적 옹호자까지: 소셜미디어 플랫폼 특성이 지속가능소비 태도와 행동에 미치는 영향 = From Lurkers to Advocates: The Impact of Social Media Platforms on Sustainable Consumption Attitudes and Behaviors

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In the era of climate crisis, the importance of sustainable consumption has been increasingly emphasized. However, the persistent “attitude–behavior gap,” wherein high environmental concern fails to translate into concrete actions, remains a critical challenge. Social media—especially influential among individuals in their 20s and 30s—serves as a key channel for disseminating sustainability messages, yet limited research has examined the differential impact of platform-specific characteristics.
This study investigates how exposure to sustainable consumption content on social media influences the attitudes and behaviors of young consumers in their 20s and 30s. Specifically, it examines: (1) whether the mediating effect of sustainable consumption attitudes on behavior varies across platforms; (2) the classification of heterogeneous consumer segments through Latent Profile Analysis (LPA); and (3) the predictors of membership in each segment. Data were collected via an online survey of 400 social media users aged 20 to 39 in South Korea, and analyzed using SPSS and Mplus.
The results reveal that, first, on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, exposure to sustainability-related content influenced behavior indirectly via attitude. In contrast, on TikTok, content exposure had a direct effect on behavior, bypassing attitudinal mediation. This finding suggests that the technological affordances of each platform may alter the psychological pathways of consumer behavior. Second, consumers were classified into four distinct segments: “Passive Observers” (59.5%), “Low-Involvement Non-Practitioners” (11.5%), “Active Practitioners” (20.8%), and “Committed Advocates” (8.2%). Notably, “Committed Advocates” were characterized by high perceived barriers to action but exhibited strong behavioral commitment driven by deep convictions. Third, gender, marital status, and the use of platforms such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) significantly predicted membership in specific consumer segments.
This study contributes to the literature by analyzing social media as a multidimensional communication channel and identifying heterogeneous consumer groups through a person-centered approach. The findings offer practical implications for developing targeted communication strategies tailored to specific platforms and consumer segments to promote sustainable consumption.