Although sustainable innovations possess an enormous potential to advance sustainable development and many customers claim to care about sustainability, firms struggle with the diffusion of innovative sustainable products. The reasons why customer adoption remains lackluster and the pathways to improve it are still largely unknown. Drawing on regulatory focus theory and the results of a focused literature review, this study sheds light on this adoption gap. We point out that consumers can have different motivational orientations (promotion and prevention focus) toward the two underlying components of sustainable innovations – sustainability and innovation. We contribute to the academic literature on persuasive communication by theoretically distinguishing four message-framing approaches to address these motivational orientations for sustainability innovation. While two of these approaches rely on pure promotion- and prevention-focus framings, we draw on paradox theory to introduce two novel approaches. These novel approaches can address cases where promotion and prevention foci co-occur, and the message, therefore, entails a motivational tension. We also contribute to regulatory focus theory by exploring the co-occurrence of promotion and prevention focus that previous research has rarely accounted for.
