Effect of message concreteness and self-relevance on willingness to engage in ESG goals: The mediating effect of temporal proximity focus

Abstract

ESG evaluates a company's performance beyond financial indicators to assess its commitment to sustainable management. However, adopting ESG practices directly and indirectly impacts customers, making it vital for companies to intentionally engage them in achieving ESG goals. At the same time, ESG activities are oriented towards future outcomes, requiring a readiness to tolerate present discomforts for long-term benefits. Hence, customers' commitment is necessary even amidst uncertain immediate results. Despite these challenges, there have been limited efforts to explore strategies to actively motivate customers to support and choose ESG initiatives. To fill this literature gap, this research investigated whether reconfiguring messages using construal-level theory could make future-oriented decisions feel psychologically closer to customers, thereby increasing their willingness to make desirable choices for the future. This research demonstrates that message concreteness affects customer engagement in ESG goals through perceived temporal proximity and that this effect is stronger if the message is perceived to be more personally relevant to customers. Based on these findings, this study provides insight into strategic communication design to foster customer engagement with ESG goals.