Does Green Brand Equity Buffer or Burn? Understanding Boundary Conditions in Justice Evaluations of Sharing Economy Service Failure

Abstract The authors investigate green brand equity as a representation of firm phenotype in terms of its impact on the relationship between perceived justice of service recovery and customer citizenship and behavioral loyalty behavior. The firm phenotype of GBE can perform different roles as a moral signal, a normative expectation or a value laden identity cue. The purpose of this study is to identify the role/s performed in the fair recovery of sharing economy service failure. Drawing on the tradeoff between expectation-disconfirmation versus judgment assimilation-categorization, this study seeks to understand the buffering/incendiary influence of green brand equity in the context of service recovery in a sustainable services context. The findings of the conceptual model are empirically verified through surveys distributed to 804 digitally engaged sharing economy consumers using Partial-Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling. The results reveal that while consumers demonstrate desirable citizenship towards the firm when it is perceived to be a high green brand equity firm that delivers fair service recovery, it does not extend the same leeway in terms of service re-patronage. The conclusion of the study is that sustainability signaling, though morally rewarded in the long-term through citizenship connoting judgment assimilation may not necessarily transform into a short-term financial reward through re-patronage since normative expectations are negatively disconfirmed. It establishes that boundary conditions within sustainable services context demonstrate a temporal dichotomy lending support to a contingency perspective of the branding buffer in service recovery.