Teaching Sustainability Across Politically Diverse Classrooms: Patterns of Interpretive Convergence

Marketing educators often fear political polarization when teaching sustainability, yet empirical evidence questioning whether ideological customization is necessary is lacking in the literature. We examine whether political identity, psychological distance framing, or institutional context is associated with marketing students’ interpretations of sustainability. Using data from 271 marketing students across three universities, we examined how students interpreted sustainability examples that varied across psychological distance dimensions. Results revealed convergence across spatial and social scenarios regardless of political affiliation, with institutional context explaining five times as much variance as political identity. However, for temporal scenarios (climate timeframes, intergenerational impacts), political affiliation moderated institutional effects. Republican and Independent students showed institution-dependent interpretation, while Democrat students converged regardless of institution. Institutional context explained substantially more variance than political identity across most sustainability dimensions, with temporal content serving as a boundary condition in which political moderation emerged. This study provides diagnostic evidence that informs how sustainability content is interpreted in politically diverse marketing classrooms.