Making Zero Visible: The Attentional Pathway of the Hidden-Zero Effect in Green Consumption

Bridging the gap between consumers’ environmental awareness and actual green consumption remains a persistent challenge. A key contributor is how individuals navigate intertemporal trade-offs, weighing immediate financial costs against delayed environmental and economic benefits in green decisions. This research examines the hidden-zero effect in green consumption by making typically omitted “zero” outcomes explicit and tests its effectiveness across monetary and environmental benefit framings as an attention-based intervention. Across three studies (N = 839) combining behavioral and eye-tracking methods, we find that making zero outcomes explicit significantly increases green product choices, but primarily under monetary (vs. environmental) framing. The effect further depends on decision perspective: for the self it emerges only under monetary framing, whereas for others it holds under both monetary and environmental framings. Eye-tracking data reveal that the effect is driven by a shift in attentional allocation toward the future zero outcome. These findings identify an attentional mechanism underlying the green consumption gap and offer a framing-based intervention to promote pro-environmental behavior.