The Scientist and the Influencer: Divergent Paths of Epistemic Authority in Sustainability Communication
(A2026-133765)

AUTHORS

Piotr Zaborek, Warsaw School of Economics; ANNA KURZAK MABROUK, Krakow University of Economics

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how consumer brand trust is shaped by the interplay of sustainability news valence (positive/negative), domain (social/environmental), and information source credibility (internet influencer/scientific report). Using a mixed-methods approach, combining a series of focus groups and a 2x2x2 between-subjects scenario experiment with a sample of 354 university students, we analyzed both the main and interactive effects of these factors on brand trust via hierarchical regression. The findings confirm that positive news in both social and environmental domains significantly enhances brand trust. We observed a significant synergistic interaction, where consistent positive news across both sustainability domains yields the greatest increase in trust. The study uncovers a domain-specific boundary condition for source credibility. While the source of information significantly moderates the impact of social sustainability news—with influencers failing to generate the same punitive impact as scientific reports regarding social transgressions—source credibility exerts no significant influence on environmental news processing. These findings suggest that consumers process environmental data as technical information (source-neutral) but social data as moral signals (source-dependent). Practically, the results suggest that brands require a holistic sustainability communication strategy and rely on highly credible sources for sensitive social messaging, especially when managing reputational risk or responding to negative news.