How can conscientious brands best influence consumers’ sustainable behaviours? The role of sustainable brand equity in consumer responses to carbon offsetting messages

Conscientious brands are emerging as key drivers of sustainable consumption. With limited research on effectively communicating conscientious brands and nudging consumers to adopt sustainable behaviours, this research explores how conscientious brands can best influence consumers' sustainable actions by analysing the impact of sustainable brand equity in consumer responses to carbon offsetting messages. Two online experiments were conducted. Study 1 (n = 202) examined the interaction effect of message depth and sustainable brand equity on outcome expectations and subsequent carbon offset purchase. Results indicated that deep claims are significantly more effective in raising consumer outcome expectation and subsequent purchase intention. Sustainable brand equity strengthens the impact of deep and shallow claims while decreasing the effectiveness gap between the two claim types. Study 2 (n = 390) examined the moderating effect of mean–end visuals on the relationship between message depth and outcome expectation. Results confirmed the interaction effects that mean visual enhances the impact of deep claim, whereas end visual strengthens the effect of shallow claim. This paper expands the existing literature on conscientious brands, focusing specifically on articulating conscientious value proposition that can effectively motivate consumers to engage in sustainable behaviours.