Empowering Consumers to Make Environmentally Sustainable Online Shopping Decisions: A Digital Nudging Approach

Abstract

An ever-increasing share of people is using online shopping to satisfy their consumer needs. This has led to a vivid discussion regarding the environmental sustainability of e-commerce that also emphasized the role that consumer's decisions can play in mitigating its negative impacts. However, while many individuals state that they are willing to act more sustainably, they often struggle to follow through with their 'green' intentions. We propose digital nudging as an approach to encourage environmentally sustainable online shopping decisions and empower consumers to act in line with their intentions. In an online experiment with 323 participants, we evaluate the effectiveness of three different nudging interventions (defaults, active choice, and self-nudging) to promote environmentally sustainable shipping options in an online store and assess the consumers' ethics and empowerment perceptions of the nudges. We find that all nudges are effective in changing decisions, but default nudges lead to negative perceptions among consumers.

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“…To mitigate the environmental consequences of ecommerce, all players in the e-commerce value chain need to collectively develop and offer more sustainable products, services, and solutions. Consumers should be encouraged and supported to select them in order to overcome the attitudebehaviour gap (Gershoff & Frels, 2015;Michels, Ochmann, Günther, Laumer, & Tiefenbeck, 2022;White, Habib, & Hardisty, 2019). Behavioural interventions such as nudges can be applied to achieve this (Rankine & Khosravi, 2021;Thaler & Sunstein, 2008).…”

“…Explanations for this attitude-behaviour gap are conflicting needs with regards to convenience, costs, or habits (Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002). Digital nudging is suggested as one option to make the choice of sustainable options more convenient and to change habitual purchase behaviour (Gershoff & Frels, 2015;Michels et al, 2022;White et al, 2019). Recent research suggests that default, active choice, and self-nudges could increase the choice of more sustainable options in consumer choice areas related to delivery options, packaging, and carbon offsetting in online apparel retailing (Michels et al, 2022).…”

“…Digital nudging is suggested as one option to make the choice of sustainable options more convenient and to change habitual purchase behaviour (Gershoff & Frels, 2015;Michels et al, 2022;White et al, 2019). Recent research suggests that default, active choice, and self-nudges could increase the choice of more sustainable options in consumer choice areas related to delivery options, packaging, and carbon offsetting in online apparel retailing (Michels et al, 2022). Results of this research remains mixed, disconfirming (Mirbabaie, Marx, & Germies, 2021) or confirming the effectiveness of sustainability nudging (Berger, Nüske, & Müller, 2020;Fechner & Herder, 2022;Katner & Jianu, 2019;Lembcke, Willnat, Engelbrecht, & Lichtenberg, 2020).…”

“…The self-learning algorithm uses personalization and context-awareness to deliver nudges that are relevant to the 4) product returns. An additional area is the offsetting of carbon emissions induced through a purchase which is increasingly offered by online retailers (Michels et al, 2022). Extant research on the effectiveness of digital nudging in e-commerce has considered a variety of product categories (Berger et al, 2020;Katner & Jianu, 2019;Michels et al, 2022;Mirbabaie et al, 2021) and has demonstrated that digital nudging can steer consumers' product choices towards more sustainable options.…”

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“…The concept of the customer journey is based on the decision-making process and distinguishes three main phases: the pre-purchase, the purchase, and the postpurchase phase Tueanrat, Papagiannidis, & Alamanos, 2021). In e-commerce, consumers face decisions such as the choice of an online retailer, specific products, delivery option, type of packaging, and product return (Ignat & Chankov, 2020;Michels et al, 2022;Vakulenko, Shams, Hellström, & Hjort, 2019). These decisions have environmental consequences that can be mitigated by steering consumers towards choosing the more sustainable options.…”