Digital Nudging to Promote Sustainable Consumer Behavior? An Experimental Analysis in Online Fashion Retail

Schürmann, Christina Luisa; Helinski, Cindy; Koch, Julia; Westmattelmann, Daniel; Schewe, Gerhard

Abstract

Online fashion retail is gaining importance and faces challenges in addressing its environmental impact. Targeting sustainable product choices presents an opportunity to contribute to the sustainable development of online retail. This can be accomplished through digital nudging, a technique influencing consumer behavior. Based on nudging theory, an online experiment is conducted employing simplification and social norm nudges to examine their impact on sustainable product choice in online retail. A dataset of 461 participants is analyzed using contingency analysis, logistic regression, and Mann-Whitney U tests. The results reveal that the simplification nudge increases sustainable product choice. Contrarily, the social norm nudge only positively affects the non-nudged sustainable product choice. Further, the simplification nudge negatively affects subsequent sustainable behavior and positively affects consumers' autonomy perception, while the social norm nudge shows insignificant effects. Finally, theoretical implications and recommendations for introducing digital nudging tools to promote sustainable choices in online retail are derived.