Understanding the impact of perceived emotional valence of eco-labels for novel food products on consumer preferences, visual attention, and cognition - a multimodal study using EEG and eye tracking.

BACKGROUND: Eco-labels are becoming an important marketing tool used to communicate these environmental attributes to consumers. However, little is known about how the perceived emotional valence of sustainability messaging influences the cognitive process underlying the purchase decision.

METHODS: This exploratory study investigates the effect of perceived emotional valence of eco-labels on consumer preferences, visual attention and neural processing for novel food products by integrating behavioral (choice data), eye-tracking and EEG data..

RESULTS: Behavioral results indicated that eco-labels with high perceived positivity significantly increased purchase intentions, whereas labels with low perceived positivity did not. Eye tracking results revealed shorter fixation durations and lower number of fixations for high perceived positivity eco-labels, possibly suggesting greater processing fluency. The EEG results further revealed differences in P300 and LPP amplitudes for the different label categories. Integrated behavioral-neural analyses further showed that higher P300 amplitudes increased purchase intentions, whereas greater N200 amplitudes reduced purchase intentions for high-positivity labels.

CONCLUSION: The results provide preliminary evidence showing that the effectiveness of eco-labels depends not only on what is communicated but how it is perceived. By conceptualizing valence as a continuum rather than a binary positive-negative construct, this study offers new hypotheses regarding the attentional and neural mechanisms through which sustainability communication shapes consumer preferences.