Understanding Consumer Responses to Sustainability Labelling: Cognitive Biases, Cultural Contexts, and Purchase Behaviour

In response to mounting global challenges around sustainability, food and beverage labelling has emerged as an important medium through which values such as environmental responsibility, health consciousness, and ethical production are communicated and negotiated, prompting a surge in interdisciplinary research into its influence and effectiveness. Existing research has offered in-depth insights into how sustainability labelling influences consumers' product perceptions and consumption decisions. However, many current policy and academic discussions are grounded in complex, multidimensional definitions of sustainability, which may not align with how everyday consumers perceive, prioritise, and respond to labelling during actual purchase decisions. Consumers often lack the cognitive resources, time, or motivation to process intricate sustainability labelling. This disconnect raises important questions about how consumers interpret these cues in practice and whether simplified representations may lead to misunderstanding, neglect, or cognitive biases such as halo and horn effects.

Adopting a cross-cultural perspective, this study investigates how consumers from different cultural backgrounds perceive and respond to sustainability labelling. Grounded in an interpretivist perspective and informed by phenomenological methodology, the research draws on semi-structured in-depth interviews with both Chinese and English-speaking consumers living in Aotearoa. Particular attention is given to how cognitive biases arise, how they influence decision-making, and how these processes may vary across food types and online shopping environments. Theoretically, this study provides a more culturally informed understanding of how consumers perceive sustainability labelling of food and beverage products and explores how cognitive biases influence product perception and decision-making. Practically, it seeks to generate insights that may support the development of more effective and culturally sensitive labelling strategies to promote sustainable consumption.