Determinants of positive consumer affect toward luxury brands’ social media posts on sustainability: A fsQCA approach

Given the many ways luxury firms can communicate their sustainability efforts on social media, this study employs complexity theory to identify the non-linear causal pathways resulting in positive affect on luxury brands’ sustainability posts. A sample of 127 Instagram posts created by 14 luxury brands addressing Earth Day (April 22) and “Blackout Tuesday” (June 2) were collected to represent two types of sustainability events (environmental and social sustainability). Employing a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), this study identifies a different number of solutions resulting in positive consumer affect for environmental and social sustainability toward a social media post, as measured by the percentage of comments containing at least one red heart emoji ([Formula presented]). This study contributes to luxury branding theory and practice by demonstrating that positive affect towards a luxury brand's sustainability social media posts is due to interactions among assorted causal conditions.