Digital Platforms for Sustainable Development: Unveiling the Psychology of Green Food Choices

Abstract

Digital platforms are reshaping consumer engagement with sustainable food, offering new cognitive, social, and technological contexts for green purchasing. This study explores the psychological mechanisms and social dynamics that drive green food purchase intentions in digital environments. By integrating the theory of planned behavior (TPB) with social identity theory (SIT), we develop and empirically test a structural model that examines the influence of attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, group norms, and ingroup identification. Data were collected from habitual users of digital food platforms and analysed through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results confirm the pivotal role of digital affordances in enabling sustainable behavior and highlight the importance of social identity in shaping purchase intentions. Notably, group norms and ingroup identification significantly enhance the explanatory power of TPB, suggesting that identity-based mechanisms are central to understanding sustainable food choices online. This study offers theoretical insights into the intersection of sustainability, digital technology, and consumer psychology, providing actionable implications for designing digital ecosystems that promote sustainable development.