Search Changes Consumers' Minds: How Recognizing Gaps Drives Sustainable Choices
This addresses the intention-behavior gap in sustainable consumption for consumers, offering an incremental insight into how information processing influences purchasing decisions.
The study investigated how information searching affects sustainable purchasing decisions, finding that actively searching for ethical product information increased the importance consumers assigned to ethical aspects, with recognition of knowledge gaps driving significant behavior change including increased searching and stronger desire to alter future shopping habits.
Despite a growing desire among consumers to shop responsibly, translating this intention into behaviour remains challenging. Previous work has identified that information seeking (or lack thereof) is a contributing factor to this intention-behaviour gap.In this paper, we hypothesize that searching can bridge this gap - helping consumers to make purchasing decisions that are better aligned with their values. We conducted a task-based study with 308 participants, asking them to search for information on one of eight ethical aspects regarding a product they were actively shopping for. Our findings show that actively searching for such information led to an overall increase in the importance participants' assigned to ethical aspects.However, it was the recognition and understanding of ethical considerations, rather than ethical intentions or search activity, that drove shifts towards more responsible purchasing decisions. Participants who acknowledged and filled knowledge gaps in their decision making showed significant behaviour change, including increased searching and a stronger desire to alter their future shopping habits. We conclude that responsible consumption can be considered a partial information problem, where awareness of one's own knowledge limitations may be the catalyst needed for meaningful consumer behaviour change.