What you see, What you get? Mapping Inconsistencies of Sustainability Judgements among Experts and Consumers

Addressing sustainability issues requires collective action, with individuals playing a crucial role. Despite a willingness to shop responsibly, people lack the knowledge needed to make informed decisions, this information gap underpins the intention-behaviour gap. Online shopping, now dominant, can offer rich sustainability information. However, consumers, especially those new to the sustainability domain, face challenges in comprehending this information due to its complexity and volume, including confusion over the meaning of ecolabels. Product descriptions are a key decision-making resource, yet there is no significant research analysing their sustainability content or their potential for seamless in-situ/situated learning. We propose a framework using a Taxonomy for Product Sustainability (TPS) to automatically extract and analyse sustainability profiles from product descriptions. By comparing these profiles with expert judgements, we identify how alignments can be seen as an opportunity to enhance consumer awareness and how misalignments can introduce cognitive biases that impede ethical shopping. Our analysis of food product descriptions reveals distinct patterns of agreement and disagreement, highlighting cognitive biases that affect consumer decisions. These biases, driven by misalignment and information overload, contribute to the intention-behaviour gap in sustainable shopping. By identifying specific areas of confusion, we suggest targeted interventions, such as informative prompts, to facilitate seamless learning and improve consumer knowledge, eventually promoting more informed and ethical choices.