The research, published in the open-access journal Heliyon by Kim Quoc Trung Nguyen of Ho Chi Minh City Open University, surveyed 375 Vietnamese online shoppers who had previously bought green or eco-friendly products over the internet. Using a statistical technique known as partial least squares structural equation modeling, or PLS-SEM, the study tested a single integrated model of how environmental stimuli on e-commerce platforms are converted into the intention to buy. The results, the author argues, overturn a comfortable assumption of digital marketing: that engagement with green content automatically breeds green purchasing.

The theoretical backbone of the study is the stimulus–organism–response framework, a classic model of environmental psychology that traces a causal chain from external cues to internal states to behavior. In this case, the stimuli are four features of the green e-commerce environment: green perceived value, meaning the environmental and personal benefits a consumer believes a product delivers; eco-brand credibility, the trustworthiness of a brand’s environmental claims; mobile shopping experience, the quality and usability of the shopping app itself; and platform sustainability features, such as eco-labels, green filters, and transparent environmental information. The “organism” in the middle of the chain is digital engagement behavior, the reading, commenting, sharing, and recommending of green content online. The “response” is online shopping intention.

What the model found was strikingly consistent. All four stimuli were positively and significantly associated with digital engagement, and all four were also directly associated with purchase intention. Green perceived value showed the strongest pull toward engagement, with a path coefficient of 0.334, followed closely by mobile shopping experience at 0.323 and eco-brand credibility at 0.322. Platform sustainability features, at 0.287, were also robust, and notably carried the largest direct effect on intention among the four, suggesting that visible cues like eco-labels and green filtering tools do more than invite interaction; they reduce the uncertainty that surrounds environmental claims, which consumers often cannot verify before a parcel arrives.

Digital engagement itself did predict purchase intention, but only weakly. Its direct path coefficient was a modest 0.163, with a small effect size of 0.052. In plain terms, people who read, discuss, and share green content online are somewhat more likely to intend to buy green products, but engagement alone explains little. The study interprets engagement instead as a transmission mechanism, a bridge that carries evaluations of value, trust, and experience toward intention, rather than an engine that drives purchasing by itself. The model explained 51 percent of the variance in digital engagement and a substantial 75.3 percent of the variance in online shopping intention, but the interaction terms, not the engagement pathway, accounted for much of that explanatory power.

Those interaction terms are the heart of the paper. The author tested two consumer competencies as moderators of the engagement-to-intention link: digital literacy, the ability to find, evaluate, and use online information, and environmental knowledge, the understanding of environmental facts and the ecological consequences of consumption. Both strengthened the relationship, but environmental knowledge did so more powerfully. The interaction between engagement and environmental knowledge produced an effect size of 0.810, classified as large, while the digital literacy interaction produced 0.623, also large but clearly smaller. The corresponding path coefficients were 0.453 and 0.377 respectively, both highly significant.

The simple-slope analysis makes the pattern vivid. When environmental knowledge was high, one standard deviation above the mean, the effect of engagement on intention was strongly positive, with a slope of 0.616. At average knowledge levels the slope was 0.163. But when knowledge was low, the slope turned significantly negative, at minus 0.290. The same reversal appeared for digital literacy, with slopes of 0.540, 0.163, and minus 0.214 at high, mean, and low levels. In other words, for consumers lacking these competencies, more engagement with green content was actually associated with less intention to buy, a result the author links to the elaboration likelihood model, in which the ability to process information centrally determines whether persuasion succeeds.

Why would knowledge matter more than digital skill? The author’s answer is that the two competencies operate at different levels of specificity. Digital literacy is instrumental and domain-general: it helps people navigate interfaces, assess reviews, and adapt to new apps. Environmental knowledge is value-laden and sustainability-specific: it enables consumers to judge whether a green claim is credible, to recognize greenwashing, and to align a purchase with their own environmental principles. A digitally fluent shopper can scroll effortlessly through eco-marketing without ever asking whether the claims are true. A knowledgeable shopper asks that question first, and the answer determines whether engagement ripens into a purchase.

The Vietnamese setting adds an important layer of interpretation. The country’s e-commerce market has grown among the fastest in Southeast Asia since the pandemic, with platforms such as Shopee, Lazada, Tiki, and TikTok Shop becoming mainstay shopping channels, particularly for young, mobile-first consumers. In such a market, stimulating engagement with green content is comparatively easy; the harder task is converting that engagement into sustainable purchasing, which depends on whether consumers can critically evaluate environmental information. The author cautions that in more mature green markets, where formal certification systems and established eco-labels carry more institutional weight, individual environmental knowledge may play a less dominant role, so the findings should be generalized carefully.

The practical implications are concrete. Platforms and sellers, the study suggests, should invest in transparent, specific, and consistent environmental information, including clear eco-labels and user-friendly green filters, to counter the skepticism that greenwashing breeds. They should also design digital experiences that genuinely foster engagement, since engagement remains a meaningful pathway even if it is not sufficient on its own. Most importantly, businesses and policymakers should treat consumer competencies as strategic infrastructure: educational initiatives that build environmental knowledge and digital literacy will, on this evidence, do more to convert clicks into sustainable purchases than any amount of promotional content alone. The study’s limitations, a convenience sample, cross-sectional self-reported data, and a single national context, mean the results are associative rather than causal, but the central message stands: in green e-commerce, what consumers know shapes what engagement is worth.

Subject of Research: The role of digital engagement, digital literacy, and environmental knowledge in green consumer purchase intention in Vietnamese e-commerce

Article Title: Green consumer behavior in e-commerce: The mediating role of digital engagement and the moderating effects of literacy and environmental knowledge

Article References: Nguyen, K. Q. T. (2026). Green consumer behavior in e-commerce: The mediating role of digital engagement and the moderating effects of literacy and environmental knowledge. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45511. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45511

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45511

Keywords: green consumer behavior, e-commerce, digital engagement, digital literacy, environmental knowledge, sustainable consumption, PLS-SEM, greenwashing, Vietnam, online shopping intention, eco-labels, consumer psychology

The research addresses a long-standing puzzle in food psychology. Decades of experiments have shown that environmental cues such as lighting, plate size, tablecloth color, and even the weight of cutlery can shift consumption patterns, but music has usually been treated as a single undifferentiated factor. Studies have compared, for example, loud versus soft sound or fast versus slow tempo, often reporting that calmer environments encourage slower eating and, in some cases, reduced intake. What has been missing is a more precise account of which psychological property of music carries the effect. Arousal, the physiological and emotional activation a listener experiences, has emerged as a leading candidate because it is known to influence attention, self-control, and decision-making in other consumer domains.

The theoretical logic behind the study draws on established models of self-regulation. High-arousal stimuli, whether loud rock tracks, upbeat dance music, or energetic pop, tend to elevate physiological activation, narrow attention toward immediate rewards, and reduce the cognitive resources available for deliberate evaluation. In a dining context, that state can favor indulgent, palatable, energy-dense options that deliver immediate sensory pleasure. Low-arousal music, by contrast, is associated with relaxation, slower physiological rhythms, and a more reflective processing style. In that calmer state, consumers are thought to have greater capacity to consult long-term goals, including health aspirations, when deciding what and how much to eat. The study set out to test whether this arousal mechanism translates into measurable differences in healthy food consumption.

Methodologically, the research follows the experimental conventions of sensory and consumer science, in which participants are exposed to carefully controlled auditory environments while their food choices and intake are recorded. By manipulating the arousal quality of background music while holding other factors constant, the design isolates the specific contribution of musical activation from confounds such as familiarity, liking, or lyrical content. Measures of consumption, rather than mere intention or preference, are central to the approach, because the gap between what people say they want and what they actually eat is one of the most stubborn problems in nutrition research. Behavioral outcomes of this kind carry more weight for public health applications than survey-based reports ever can.

The practical implications reach well beyond the laboratory. Restaurants, cafeterias, workplace canteens, school dining halls, and hospital food services all make continuous, often unconscious, decisions about their sonic environments. If the arousal level of that soundtrack genuinely shifts consumption toward or away from healthy options, then sound becomes a low-cost, scalable instrument for what researchers call nudging: restructuring the choice environment so that better decisions require less willpower. Unlike taxes on sugary drinks or mandatory labeling schemes, an auditory nudge imposes no financial burden, requires no regulatory approval, and can be adjusted instantly. A canteen seeking to increase salad uptake could, in principle, experiment with calmer playlists during lunch service without changing a single item on the menu.

The findings also connect to a broader scientific conversation about multisensory perception. Flavor, as sensory scientists repeatedly emphasize, is not a property of food alone but a construction of the brain that integrates taste, smell, texture, sight, and sound. Charles Spence and colleagues at the University of Oxford have shown that high-frequency sounds can enhance sweetness perception while low frequencies accentuate bitterness, and that the crunch of a potato chip sounds fresher when amplified. The arousal study extends this multisensory program from the perception of individual foods to the pattern of overall consumption, suggesting that sound does not only change how food tastes but also which foods people choose to eat in the first place. That distinction matters for anyone designing food environments, because it implies that acoustic design operates upstream of flavor itself.

For the food and hospitality industry, the research arrives at a moment of intense commercial interest in experience design. Streaming services now curate playlists specifically marketed for restaurants and retail spaces, and chains invest heavily in the acoustic identity of their brands. The study’s message cuts against the prevailing tendency to fill dining spaces with energetic, high-tempo soundtracks intended to convey vibrancy and accelerate table turnover. While fast, arousing music may indeed encourage quicker eating and higher customer flow, it may simultaneously steer customers toward less healthy selections and larger portions of indulgent items. Establishments positioning themselves around wellness, from health-focused fast-casual brands to spa restaurants, have an obvious incentive to test whether calmer soundscapes reinforce their nutritional positioning.

Public health researchers are likely to view the results with cautious optimism. Interventions that operate below conscious awareness raise legitimate ethical questions about manipulation and autonomy, and critics of nudging have long argued that such techniques treat symptoms rather than the structural causes of poor diet. Yet the same subliminality that provokes ethical debate also makes auditory nudges unusually durable: they do not depend on consumers reading labels, calculating costs, or remembering dietary guidelines. Moreover, because music affects nearly everyone in a shared space simultaneously, it offers a rare population-level lever. A school district, for example, could adjust cafeteria playlists across dozens of sites at essentially no cost, then measure whether healthy meal uptake changes over the following months.

Important caveats temper the enthusiasm. Effects of ambient cues on eating are typically modest in magnitude, and their size can vary with hunger, culture, musical preference, and the social context of the meal. A playlist that feels calming to one diner may feel tedious to another, and individual differences in musical taste could moderate any arousal-based effect. Replication across diverse populations and real-world settings, rather than controlled laboratory or simulated restaurant conditions, remains the essential next step before the findings can be translated into firm recommendations. Researchers in this field also caution against overinterpreting single studies, noting that the literature on environmental influences on eating contains both robust effects and findings that have faded under scrutiny.

Even with those qualifications, the study adds a distinctive note to the science of eating behavior: the soundscape of a meal is not neutral scenery but an active ingredient in dietary choice. As obesity and diet-related disease continue to strain health systems worldwide, attention is shifting toward interventions that make healthy choices easier rather than merely advising people to make them. Background music, ubiquitous and largely unexamined, now stands among the environmental factors worth serious attention. The next time a restaurant lowers the energy of its soundtrack, the change may be doing more than setting a mood. It may be quietly reshaping what its customers choose to eat, one calm song at a time.

Subject of Research: The effect of background music arousal on healthy food consumption

Article Title: Turn it down to eat more healthily: the effect of background music arousal on healthy food consumption

Article References: Cao, S., Wen, B., Zheng, L., Spence, C., Xie, W., Zheng, J., Finley, A., & Liu, C. (2026). Turn it down to eat more healthily: the effect of background music arousal on healthy food consumption. npj Science of Food. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41538-026-01146-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s41538-026-01146-2

Keywords: background music, food consumption, healthy eating, arousal, sensory marketing, consumer psychology, nudging, multisensory perception, eating behavior, food environment, nutrition, restaurant design