Thinking and feeling sustainable: identity-based cognitive and affective mechanisms in food choices across generations.

Background: Sustainable food consumption is often framed as a response to environmental concerns. However, from a psychological perspective, such choices also reflect value-laden decisions shaped by self-identity, cognitive evaluation, and emotional engagement. Despite widespread support for sustainability, a persistent intention-behavior gap remains, suggesting that information alone is insufficient to explain why consumers translate pro-environmental values into actual purchasing intentions. Drawing on identity theory, signaling theory, and social comparison theory, this study proposes a dual-mechanism framework in which green self-identity influences sustainable food purchasing intention through cognitive and affective involvement. Methods: A survey was conducted among 533 consumers in Taiwan. Structural equation modeling was employed to examine the direct and indirect effects of green self-identity on sustainable food purchasing intention. Mediation analyses were used to assess the roles of cognitive and affective involvement, while multi-group analyses were performed to compare the psychological mechanisms across Generation Y and Generation Z consumers. Results: The findings indicate that green self-identity positively influences sustainable food purchasing intention both directly and indirectly through cognitive and affective involvement. Cognitive involvement reflects consumers' analytical evaluation of sustainability-related information, whereas affective involvement captures emotional resonance with sustainability values. The results further reveal meaningful generational differences. Cognitive involvement exerts a stronger influence among Generation Y consumers, whereas affective involvement plays a more prominent role among Generation Z consumers. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that sustainable food choices are shaped by both thinking and feeling processes through which identity is translated into behavioral intention. By integrating cognitive and affective mechanisms within an identity-based framework, the study advances understanding of sustainable consumption decision-making. The findings also underscore the importance of generational differences, suggesting that sustainability communication strategies should align with the distinct cognitive and emotional orientations of different consumer cohorts.