Boosting Eco-Friendly Purchases with Behavioral Design

In 2008, British supermarket Tesco launched an initiative to add carbon footprint labels to over 70,000 products.¹ Starting with household basics like lightbulbs and laundry detergent, the goal was simple: empower shoppers to make greener choices by providing clear information about the greenhouse gas emissions associated with every product. But just four short years later, Tesco scrapped the program, citing high costs and an extremely slow pace of progress. Not only did the labeling initiative fail to drive real consumer behavior change, but other major retailers never caught on, leaving the multinational grocer questioning the value of leading its “revolution in green consumption.”¹  

The takeaway? Even when consumers and companies hold pro-environmental values, information alone is rarely enough to translate intention into action. Despite global sustainability intentions increasing, we’re still not seeing significant shifts toward eco-friendly purchasing. Consumers remain hesitant to purchase eco-friendly products, even as environmental awareness grows—in one Korean study, 82% of consumers expressed a willingness to buy eco-friendly products, but only 25% actually did.² On the corporate side, 64% of companies have a clear gap between their sustainability intentions and purchasing actions.³ While shoppers and brands largely care about sustainability, both often default to cost, convenience, and optics over real impact. For mission-driven organizations and forward-thinking companies tasked with driving sustainable consumption, it’s clear that traditional strategies—such as public awareness campaigns and eco labeling—fail to meaningfully shift behavior on either side of the market.

To drive real change, we need to reshape the decision-making environment itself. Rather than assuming eco-friendly decisions are born out of rational, objective evaluations of costs and benefits, behavioral design aims to reshape choices by tackling common points of friction and targeting key motivational barriers. In this article, we’ll examine behavioral science concepts like present bias, moral licensing, identity alignment, and psychological distancing to uncover practical ways to make eco-friendly decisions easier, more appealing, and better aligned with corporate and consumer identities.