Beyond Congruence: A Reflective Equilibrium Perspective on Sustainable Consumer Decision-Making.

Consumers increasingly express strong sustainability concerns, yet often fail to translate these values into consistent actions. It creates a gap that reflects not indifference but the complexity of balancing ideals, emotions, and practical constraints. Addressing this gap, our study introduces a dynamic process to explore how consumers negotiate moral coherence in their sustainable consumption practices. Based on a qualitative design, we conducted 60 in-depth interviews with consumers from Generations Z, Y, and X. The findings reveal that sustainable consumption is best understood as an iterative process rather than a fixed alignment of values and behaviors. Participants navigated conflicting ideals, habits, and constraints by choosing sustainable options and rejecting the unsustainable ones, generating emotional feedback such as pride, guilt, or frustration. We developed a six-step conceptual model from these narratives that maps the reflective process underpinning sustainable choices. The model reconceptualizes inconsistency not as failure but as part of moral deliberation and offers practical insights for organizations aiming to support consumers in their evolving sustainability behaviour.