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.

翻译：具有社会责任的消费者日益突出，这使得影响产品购买决策的道德、环境、社会和意识形态维度受到更多关注。尽管有这种关注，但研究一致表明，个人履行社会责任的意图与其实际购买行为之间存在显著差距：他们常常选择与其价值观不符的产品。本文旨在调查搜索如何影响这一差距。我们的研究对286名参与者进行了在线调查，询问他们的搜索行为以及是否考虑了从价格和功能到环境、社会和治理问题等与近期购买相关的各种维度。与明显的意图-行为差距预期相反，我们的研究结果表明，相当多的参与者对这些责任方面表现出漠不关心或缺乏信息。同时，与搜索和获取信息相关的困难（包括信息的可访问性和可靠性有限）导致了这一差距。这表明，部分意图-行为差距可以被理解为信息搜索问题。此外，我们的研究结果要求并激励建立搜索系统，以帮助消费者做出更明智、更负责任的购买决策。