Impact of dual routes of information cues on consumers' willingness to pay a premium in cross-border e-commerce: The role of product involvement and nutrition safety awareness

Although information cues are crucial to consumers' willingness to pay a premium, the mechanism remains unclear. Addressing this gap, we take cross-border e-commerce food consumption as a context to investigate how information cues affect consumers' willingness to pay a premium by the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), and examine the mediating role of product involvement and the moderating role of nutrition safety awareness. Data from 535 consumers in China are analyzed through a combined method with partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and artificial neural network (ANN). Results show that the central and peripheral routes of information cues exert dual positive influences on product involvement, which in turn positively affects the willingness to pay a premium. We also find that nutrition safety awareness reinforces the effect of product involvement on willingness to pay a premium. Additionally, multigroup analysis suggests gender heterogeneity in the above mechanisms among consumer groups. These conclusions provide practical references for cross-border e-commerce food retailers to optimize their food lead strategies, differentiate their marketing for different genders.