When Does Sustainable Storytelling Foster Advocacy Intention? The Mediating Roles of Perceived ESG Authenticity and Emotional Brand Resonance, and the Moderating Role of Green Scepticism in Digital Ecosystems

Amid widespread greenwashing and consumer scepticism, brands struggle to convert sustainability commitments into advocacy intention. This study examines sustainable digital storytelling encompassing narrative environmental framing (NEF), interactive sustainability co‐narration (ISC), and temporal impact visualisation (TIV) as a distinct communicative mode. Drawing on narrative transportation, signalling, and attribution theories, we develop a moderated‐mediation model linking these storytelling dimensions to sustainable consumption advocacy intention (SCAI) through perceived ESG authenticity (ESGA) and emotional brand resonance (EBR), with green scepticism (GSCP) as a boundary condition. A three‐wave, time‐lagged survey of 512 Vietnamese consumers confirms that all three storytelling dimensions enhance ESGA and EBR, which in turn predict advocacy intention, with no statistically significant residual direct effects of storytelling on advocacy. However, green scepticism attenuates these effects, diminishing compelling narratives' motivational impact. This study extends narrative transportation theory to the sustainable digital branding domain, identifies a dual cognitive‐affective pathway through which storytelling generates advocacy intention, and establishes green scepticism as a boundary condition that attenuates advocacy conversion even when authenticity and resonance perceptions are strong.