Eco-label transparency, not brand trust, drives green cosmetics buying in Nepal

When a shopper picks up a bottle of shampoo and sees a green leaf stamped on the label, a rapid chain of psychological events begins. The leaf is a signal, and signals only work if the receiver believes them. A new study from Nepal, published in Discover Sustainability, dissects that belief system with unusual precision, and its central finding is likely to unsettle marketing teams across the global beauty industry: in this developing market, the immediate credibility of eco-label evidence drives sustainable purchasing far more powerfully than any accumulated emotional trust in the brand.

The research, led by Ujjwal Adhikari of the School of Business at Pokhara University, with colleagues including Tanmoy De of Symbiosis Institute of Business Management in Hyderabad and Resam Lal Poudel of Tribhuvan University, examined how two distinct perceptions shape cosmetic purchase decisions. The first is perceived green authenticity, the sense that a product’s environmental claims are genuine rather than decorative. The second is perceived green transparency, the sense that the evidence behind those claims is openly disclosed and verifiable. The team grounded their model in Signaling Theory, which describes how sellers communicate unverifiable quality through costly or credible cues, and Commitment-Trust Theory, which describes how relationships deepen through accumulated reliability.

Data came from a structured online questionnaire administered to 250 cosmetic product users based in Pokhara Valley, Nepal. The researchers analyzed the responses using partial least squares structural equation modeling, or PLS-SEM, a statistical technique well suited to testing how multiple latent variables, constructs that cannot be observed directly, relate to one another in a hypothesized causal network. The technique estimates path coefficients, standardized values that indicate the strength and direction of each relationship, alongside p-values that flag whether an effect is statistically distinguishable from noise.

The results are striking in their asymmetry. Perceived green authenticity exerted a significant positive direct effect on purchase decision, with a path coefficient of 0.275 and a p-value below 0.001. Perceived green transparency was even stronger, with a coefficient of 0.601, also below 0.001. In plain terms, when consumers felt that a label’s environmental evidence was open and checkable, that feeling was roughly twice as influential on their buying behavior as the sense that the claims were authentic. Transparency, not authenticity, was the principal lever of sustainable consumption in this market.

Both perceptions also strongly predicted green trust, the emotional confidence that a brand’s environmental commitments are real. Authenticity predicted trust with a coefficient of 0.514, and transparency with 0.456, both highly significant. This part of the model behaved exactly as Commitment-Trust Theory would expect. Genuine and transparent signals do build trust over time. But the next link in the chain broke.

Green trust did not significantly influence purchase decision at all. Its coefficient was 0.116 with a p-value of 0.282, far above any conventional significance threshold. Nor did trust mediate the relationships between authenticity, transparency, and buying behavior. The mediation pathways, which would have shown trust converting signal perceptions into purchases, were statistically empty. Nepalese cosmetic consumers, the authors conclude, respond more to the immediate credibility of eco-label evidence than to accumulated emotional trust in the brand.

This is a technically meaningful result, and it cuts against a large body of consumer research conducted in wealthier economies, where trust often functions as the engine of green purchasing. The authors interpret the pattern through the lens of Signaling Theory. A signal works when it is credible at the moment of reception. In a developing market where greenwashing is common and regulatory oversight of environmental claims remains limited, consumers may have learned to discount brand reputation as a signal, precisely because reputation can be manufactured. What cannot be easily manufactured is verifiable evidence: a certification body named on the label, a standard cited, an ingredient claim that can be checked. When that evidence is present and transparent, the signal is credible immediately, and the purchase follows without waiting for trust to accumulate.

The implications reach well beyond cosmetics. The study was designed to align with Sustainable Development Goal 12, which calls for responsible consumption and production, and the authors argue that eco-label transparency should be treated as the principal factor influencing sustainable purchasing decisions in developing markets. For cosmetic firms, the practical guidance is concrete. Sustainability communication should be grounded in eco-friendly practices and structured around evidence, not slogans. Labels should disclose what standard they certify, who certified it, and what the claim actually means. Firms that invest in transparent, evidence-based labeling may find that their green claims convert to sales directly, without the long trust-building campaigns that traditional marketing theory prescribes.

For policymakers and sustainability governance, the findings suggest that strengthening the infrastructure of verifiable eco-labeling, including credible certification schemes and clear disclosure requirements, could accelerate sustainable consumption faster than campaigns aimed at building consumer trust in brands. If the immediate credibility of evidence is what moves shoppers, then the fastest route to sustainable behavior change is to make that evidence impossible to fake. The study also advances what the authors call the Discover Sustainability agenda, by empirically demonstrating how eco-label credibility shapes sustainable consumer behavior and facilitates sustainability transitions in a South Asian developing economy context.

There are, of course, limits to what a single survey of 250 consumers in one valley can establish. The cross-sectional design captures perceptions at one moment, and the specific cultural and market conditions of Nepal may not generalize to every developing economy. Trust may still matter in other product categories, or over longer time horizons than a purchase decision survey can observe. But the asymmetry in the data is too sharp to dismiss. In this market, transparency of eco-label evidence was the strongest predictor of sustainable buying behavior, and trust, the variable that so much green marketing strategy is built upon, was statistically irrelevant to the purchase itself. As the global beauty industry pours resources into sustainability branding, the message from Pokhara Valley is blunt: show the evidence, or the leaf on the label is just decoration.

Subject of Research: The impact of authenticity and transparency of eco-labeling in cosmetic product purchase decision

Article Title: The impact of authenticity and transparency of eco-labeling in cosmetic product purchase decision

Article References: Adhikari, U., De, T., Yadav, U. S., Bahadur, G. C. S., & Poudel, R. L. (2026). The impact of authenticity and transparency of eco-labeling in cosmetic product purchase decision. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04831-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04831-0

Keywords: impact, authenticity, transparency, eco-labeling, cosmetic, product, purchase, decision, scientific research