The core aim of climate communication is to motivate public engagement. However, intentions to act rarely translate into actual behavior. The present study’s main aim is to address this intention-behavior gap in digital contexts by examining whether emotional framing (hope vs. fear) influences engagement outcomes, operationalized as sharing intentions and clicking behavior. The study used a between-subjects design where 289 Australian adults recruited via Prolific were randomly assigned to view hope-framed, fear-framed, or neutral climate messages in a mock Instagram post format. Results suggested that the effect of emotional framing was not statistically significant neither on sharing intentions nor clicking behavior. Moreover, sharing intentions was not a statistically significant predictor of clicking behavior suggesting an intention-behavior gap in digital climate engagement. Moderation analyses further revealed that climate-related self-efficacy did not significantly moderate the relationship between emotional framing and engagement outcomes. Notably, descriptive findings further suggested that even participants with high sharing intentions rarely engaged in clicking behavior highlighting the intention-behavior gap. The present study contributes to climate communication research by highlighting the discrepancy between self-reported intentions and action oriented engagement behaviors in digital contexts.