The Effect of Homophonic Puns on Green Purchase Intention: The Mediating Role of Affiliative Humor and the Moderation of Visual Salience

Green brands are increasingly leveraging electronic commerce and interactive marketing to enhance persuasive efforts in new media environments. However, empirical research on the role of linguistic rhetoric in these interactive settings remains limited. This study examines whether the use of homophonic puns in green brand advertising increases green purchase intention on digital platforms, and how visual salience moderates this effect. Across four online experiments (total N = 1382), using stimuli modeled on social media feeds and mobile commerce interfaces, we manipulated advertising copy to include either homophonic puns or non-pun alternatives and varied the level of interface salience. The results indicate that homophonic puns significantly increase green purchase intention, primarily through the mechanism of affiliative humor, which proved stronger than alternative humor pathways. Moreover, visual salience moderates this effect: high-salience layouts amplify humor perception and purchase intention, while low-salience conditions yield no significant effects. This study advances the field of interactive marketing by proposing a language–emotion–behavior framework and introducing a cross-modal synergy mechanism that links linguistic rhetoric with visual attention in digital media contexts. The findings provide both theoretical insights and practical implications for e-commerce platforms, particularly in optimizing advertising copy, attention design, and message placement strategies to align pun-based messages with high-salience executions, thereby enhancing green brand engagement.