Sustainable luxury brands: the moderating effects of salient identity-based goals

Luxury brands struggle to communicate their sustainability commitments to consumers due to the perceived incongruence between “luxury” and “sustainability”. This study aims to provide luxury brands with insights on how to engage consumers with different social value orientations (SVOs) to make sustainable luxury purchases in a compatible manner. It investigates the relationships between personal values (symbolism/universalism), SVOs (pro-self/prosocial orientation) and behavioral intentions toward sustainable luxury brands. It further explores whether these relationships may differ when consumers view themselves as individuals (salient personal identity is activated) versus group members (salient social identity is activated).

Study 1 (N = 419) used an online experiment in which participants were randomly assigned to either salient personal or social identity conditions to test the proposed model. Study 2 (N = 438) used a fictional brand to further validate the findings. Hypotheses were tested using covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) and multi-group SEM.

Results indicate that prosocial orientation significantly increases consumers’ behavioral intentions toward sustainable luxury brands. Interestingly, pro-self-orientation can also drive intentions to support sustainable luxury brands when consumers’ personal identity is salient. Salient social identity can further strengthen the relationship between prosocial orientation and sustainable luxury behavioral intentions.

This study presents a novel, inclusive definition of sustainable luxury brands and adds theoretical rigor to the SVO framework by revealing the moderating role of salient identities, contributing to the body of knowledge in luxury brand research.