This study examines how the introduction of green new products (GNPs) by luxury brands contributes to building brand equity (i.e., brand attitude and trust) through green perceived value (GPV) and empirically assesses its impact on consumers’ purchase intentions. Furthermore, it explores the moderating role of digital customer engagement (DCE) in the relationship between GPV and building brand equity. To verify the hypothesis, we performed the partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) as an analytical technique using 572 datasets from luxury consumers in China. The results revealed that GPV through GNPs significantly influences both brand attitude and brand trust. In addition, brand attitude and brand trust were found to have a significantly positive effect on purchase intention. Moreover, DCE was observed to positively moderate the relationship between GPV and brand trust. To enhance the purchase intentions for luxury brands, it is essential to foster brand attitude and brand trust by developing a multidimensional GPV through GNPs. Furthermore, DCE plays a crucial role in strengthening the brand trust component of GPV.

Digital services trade is often viewed as a pathway to lower carbon intensity by reducing reliance on carbon-intensive physical trade. However, its environmental benefits may depend critically on the regulatory environments governing cross-border digital interactions. Integrating institutional distance theory with environmental economics, this study examines how regulatory divergence in digital services trade shapes the carbon intensity of international trade. Using bilateral trade data and country-level measures of digital services trade regulations, renewable energy capacity, and environmental policy rigor, we analyze the effects of digital regulatory gaps on carbon emissions embodied in exports. The results show that greater regulatory divergence significantly increases both total carbon emissions and export carbon intensity. The analysis further reveals that the scale effect associated with increased trade volume dominates the technique effect, such that the potential environmental benefits of digitalization are frequently offset by structural inefficiencies and compliance costs induced by regulatory fragmentation. Moreover, exporters’ renewable energy capability amplifies—rather than mitigates—the carbon-intensity-increasing effect of digital regulatory gaps, indicating that institutional misalignment imposes higher environmental opportunity costs on countries with greater low-carbon potential. By contrast, environmental policy rigor in importing countries does not significantly attenuate these effects. Overall, the findings highlight regulatory alignment as a critical condition for realizing the environmental benefits of digital trade.

This study examines how regulatory heterogeneity in digital services trade relates to the carbon intensity of bilateral trade flows. Using a structural gravity framework estimated with Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood (PPML), we analyzed 10,719 bilateral observations from the Eora Multi-Region Input–Output (MRIO) database over 2014–2020. Bilateral gaps in the OECD Digital Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (DSTRI) were used as the main measure of regulatory heterogeneity, and the overall gap was decomposed into infrastructure-related hard barriers and institutional soft barriers. The results suggest that digital regulatory gaps are associated with a higher carbon intensity in trade while also being associated with lower total embodied emissions through reduced trade volumes. This indicates that lower aggregate emissions under regulatory divergence may reflect contraction in trade activity rather than genuine environmental improvement. The decomposition analysis further suggests that infrastructure-related misalignment is more closely associated with carbon inefficiency, whereas institutional divergence operates mainly through its association with trade volume. In addition, environmental policy stringency in the importing country appears to strengthen the positive association between institutional regulatory gaps and carbon intensity, consistent with the possibility of regulatory overload. The study contributes to the sustainability literature by showing that carbon intensity provides a more informative indicator of sustainable trade performance than aggregate emissions alone in fragmented regulatory environments. It also suggests that digital governance, trade policy, and environmental policy should be considered together in promoting more sustainable forms of international trade, particularly in the context of emerging policy frameworks such as WTO digital trade negotiations, OECD digital governance initiatives, and carbon border adjustment mechanisms (CBAMs).