The intention-behavior gap

Why do people who care about sustainability, ethics, or social responsibility still so often buy in ways that do not reflect those concerns? This question sits at the heart of a long-running conversation in consumer research. Our initiative builds on that conversation by looking more closely at what happens before a purchase is made: when people search, compare, notice, and decide what matters.

1. What is this problem?

The intention–behaviour gap describes a familiar pattern: people may say they care about ethical, green, or socially responsible consumption, but those concerns do not always translate into what they actually buy. In principle, many consumers want to support better labour practices, lower environmental harm, or more responsible products. In practice, those intentions often weaken or disappear in the moment of choice.

Research has shown that this is not simply a matter of hypocrisy or indifference. People’s stated values have to compete with price, convenience, habit, time pressure, product availability, and uncertainty. Ethical concerns may matter in principle, but still fail to become active parts of the decision when shopping becomes fast, effortful, or confusing.

This matters especially in product search, comparison, and purchasing because shopping is where broad intentions meet practical constraints. Consumers rarely make decisions in a calm, abstract setting; they search under time pressure, compare imperfect information, and rely on what is visible, easy to interpret, and easy to act on. That means ethical concerns often fail to enter the actual shopping decision not because they do not matter, but because they are harder to access, harder to compare, or harder to use than other criteria such as price, brand, speed, and convenience.

2. Key works

Carrington, Neville & Whitwell (2010) A widely recognized classic in ethical consumption research, this paper helped make the gap itself a central problem by showing that ethical purchase intentions often break down before they become actual buying behaviour. It matters here because it frames the issue in direct, everyday terms: people may want to buy responsibly, yet still fail to “walk their talk” in real shopping situations.

Ajzen (1991) A foundational theory paper, Ajzen’s work on planned behaviour explains why intentions alone are never enough: action also depends on whether people feel able to act and whether the situation supports follow-through. It remains important because it provides the clearest conceptual basis for understanding why caring about an issue does not automatically lead to changed behaviour.

Young, Hwang, McDonald & Oates (2010) This influential study brought the discussion into the concrete world of green purchasing and showed how sustainable choices are shaped by everyday barriers such as effort, information, and competing priorities. It matters for this theme because it makes the gap visible in the actual act of shopping, not just in attitudes or survey responses.

White, Habib & Hardisty (2019) A major newer synthesis, this review organized the field around the practical drivers of sustainable consumer behaviour, including habits, social influence, emotions, and the visibility of impacts. It matters because it shows that the conversation has moved beyond simply noting the gap toward asking what kinds of environments and interventions make responsible action more likely.

ElHaffar, Durif & Dubé (2020) This recent review revisits the attitude–intention–behaviour gap in green consumption and shows that the problem is not caused by one thing alone, but by a mix of psychological, contextual, and informational factors. It matters because it captures the current state of the debate: the gap is well established, but its explanation is becoming broader and more nuanced.

Casais & Faria (2022) A newer contribution, this study examines how the gap is shaped by consumer profiles, mediators, and moderators such as habits, routines, and willingness to make sacrifices. It matters because it reinforces an important point for public-interest research: responsible consumption depends not only on values, but also on whether ethical concerns become usable and actionable in the flow of everyday choice.

3. Initiative’s contribution

Seeking Socially Responsible Consumers: Exploring the Intention–Search–Behaviour Gap (Azzopardi & van der Sluis, 2024) adds an important next step to this conversation by arguing that the classic gap can also be understood as a search and information problem. Rather than looking only at the distance between intention and final behaviour, the study shows a progressive widening gap from intention, to active consideration, to actual search behaviour. This matters because ethical concerns may be important to consumers in principle, yet still fail to become active considerations or real search actions during shopping. In other words, the challenge is not only whether people act on their values, but also whether those values become visible, relevant, and usable early enough in the decision process to shape what people look for in the first place.

4. Why this changes the conversation

This shifts the discussion in a useful way. Instead of treating the problem only as a mismatch between intention and action, it encourages us to look at the steps in between: intention, consideration, search, and decision. That makes room for a more practical and public-interest perspective on responsible consumption. The gap is not only behavioural, but also shaped by information access, awareness, and communication, especially by whether people can find, recognize, compare, and act on ethical criteria when they are actually shopping.

Read more

1. Ajzen, I. (1991). The Theory of Planned Behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T
2. Azzopardi, L., & van der Sluis, F. (2024). Seeking Socially Responsible Consumers: Exploring the Intention-Search-Behaviour Gap. Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval, 153–164. https://doi.org/10.1145/3627508.3638324
3. Carrington, M. J., Neville, B. A., & Whitwell, G. J. (2014). Lost in Translation: Exploring the Ethical Consumer Intention–Behavior Gap. Journal of Business Research, 67(1), 2759–2767. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2012.09.022
4. Casais, B., & Faria, J. (2022). The Intention-Behavior Gap in Ethical Consumption: Mediators, Moderators and Consumer Profiles Based on Ethical Priorities. Journal of Macromarketing, 42(1), 100–113. https://doi.org/10.1177/02761467211054836
5. ElHaffar, G., Durif, F., & Dubé, L. (2020). Towards Closing the Attitude-Intention-Behaviour Gap in Green Consumption: A Narrative Review of the Literature and an Overview of Future Research Directions. Journal of Cleaner Production, 275, 122556. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.122556
6. White, K., Habib, R., & Hardisty, D. J. (2019). How to SHIFT Consumer Behaviors to Be More Sustainable: A Literature Review and Guiding Framework. Journal of Marketing, 83(3), 22–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022242919825649
7. Young, W., Hwang, K., McDonald, S., & Oates, C. J. (2010). Sustainable Consumption: Green Consumer Behaviour When Purchasing Products. Sustainable Development, 18(1), 20–31. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.394