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Seeking Socially Responsible Consumers: Exploring the Intention-"Search"-Behaviour Gap

Leif Azzopardi, Frans van de Sluis

Abstract

The increasing prominence of Socially Responsible Consumers has brought about a heightened focus on the ethical, environmental, social, and ideological dimensions influencing product purchasing decisions. Despite this emphasis, studies have consistently revealed a significant gap between individuals' intentions to be socially responsible and their actual purchasing behaviors: they often choose products that do not align with their values. This paper aims to investigate how search in influences this gap. Our investigation involves an online survey of 286 participants, where we inquire about their search behaviors and whether they considered various dimensions, ranging from price and features to environmental, social, and governance issues in relation to a recent purchase. Contrary to expectations of a clear intention-behavior gap, our findings suggest that a considerable number of participants exhibited indifference or lack of information regarding these responsible aspects. While, difficulties related to searching for and acquiring information contributed to the gap, including the limited accessibility and reliability of information. This suggests that part of the intention-behaviour gap can be framed as an information seeking problem. Moreover our findings warrant and motivate search systems that help support consumers make more informed and responsible purchasing decisions.

Seeking Socially Responsible Consumers: Exploring the Intention-"Search"-Behaviour Gap

Abstract

The increasing prominence of Socially Responsible Consumers has brought about a heightened focus on the ethical, environmental, social, and ideological dimensions influencing product purchasing decisions. Despite this emphasis, studies have consistently revealed a significant gap between individuals' intentions to be socially responsible and their actual purchasing behaviors: they often choose products that do not align with their values. This paper aims to investigate how search in influences this gap. Our investigation involves an online survey of 286 participants, where we inquire about their search behaviors and whether they considered various dimensions, ranging from price and features to environmental, social, and governance issues in relation to a recent purchase. Contrary to expectations of a clear intention-behavior gap, our findings suggest that a considerable number of participants exhibited indifference or lack of information regarding these responsible aspects. While, difficulties related to searching for and acquiring information contributed to the gap, including the limited accessibility and reliability of information. This suggests that part of the intention-behaviour gap can be framed as an information seeking problem. Moreover our findings warrant and motivate search systems that help support consumers make more informed and responsible purchasing decisions.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 28 sections, 4 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. Models of Consumer Buying Process
  4. Socially Responsible Consumers
  5. Intention-Behaviour Gap
  6. Methodology
  7. Design
  8. Survey Development
  9. Participants
  10. Data Analysis and Reporting
  11. Results
  12. Intention-Behaviour Gap
  13. The Role of Search
  14. Ethical Procurement
  15. Environmental and Social Responsibility
  16. ...and 13 more sections

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: Pie charts showing the time invested, options considered, and period covered by the reported purchase decisions.
  • Figure 2: Importance values including $95\%$ confidence intervals for each of the aspects surveyed. Values correspond to (1) not at all, (2) slightly, (3) moderately, (4) very, and (5) extremely important.
  • Figure 3: Stacked bar plot showing, per theme, the percentage of participants that considered and searched for it. Themes are ranked based on their considered, searched percentage.
  • Figure 4: Likert scale responses for the ease, perceived value, and success expectancies for searches. Non-adjusted $95\%$ confidence intervals are included as error bars.