Service Economies and Environmental–Economic Decoupling: Structural Conditions for Sustainability-Oriented Service Marketing

Sustainability transitions depend increasingly on the expansion of service-based economies. However, the macro-level role of service-sector intensity in shaping cross-national environmental performance remains underexplored in service marketing research. This study addresses this gap by examining whether service-oriented economic structures are associated with environmental–economic decoupling across countries. Because decoupling is inherently a temporal process, the present cross-sectional design does not measure it directly. Instead, it identifies cross-national emission patterns that are consistent with the structural characteristics of decoupling reported in previous research. It also considers how sectoral composition shapes the institutional conditions that support sustainability-oriented service marketing systems. This study uses cross-national data for 222 economies, drawn from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators for the reference year 2023. Economies are classified into four structural groups based on income level and service-sector intensity. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression are applied to examine how these structural economic characteristics relate to cross-national variation in carbon dioxide emissions per capita. The analysis of variance shows that emission intensity differs systematically across the four structural groups, but the difference is driven primarily by the income gradient: both high-income groups emit significantly more than both lower-income groups, whereas neither the contrast between the two high-income groups nor the contrast between the two lower-income groups reaches significance. Within the high-income subsample, the regression estimates a negative association between service-sector share and emissions in the baseline specification (B = −0.0275, SE = 0.0069, p < 0.001). This association is not robust. It weakens to marginal significance under heteroscedasticity-consistent (HC3) standard errors (p = 0.065) and loses significance entirely once major hydrocarbon-exporting economies are excluded (p = 0.464). Hypothesis 2 is, therefore, recorded as receiving tentative and conditional support only, and the service-intensity result is described as suggestive rather than established throughout the manuscript. By contrast, the income-based group differences and the income × service-intensity interaction remains stable across every specification tested. The study extends service-dominant logic (SDL) and sustainability transition perspectives to the macroeconomic level. Its contribution to service marketing is to provide a better understanding of the broader economic and institutional context in which sustainability-oriented service marketing operates. The study does not test firm- or customer-level outcomes such as ESG credibility, green brand equity, customer trust, or service value co-creation. Instead, the relationships between national economic structure and these outcomes are presented as theoretical propositions for future research rather than as tested effects.