Sustainable Informativeness in Digital Accommodation Platforms and Sustainable Consumption Behavior: The Roles of Value and Trust

As digital transformation accelerates in tourism and hospitality, sustainability-related information on booking platforms has become increasingly relevant to consumer decision-making. However, prior research has not sufficiently explained how such information operates as part of digital choice architecture or how it becomes meaningful for sustainable consumption decisions. To address this gap, this study introduces sustainable informativeness as a sustainability-specific and platform-contextual construct reflecting the visibility, interpretability, usefulness, comparability, and decision-facilitating role of sustainability-related information. Drawing on digital choice architecture, value theory, and trust theory, this study examines the structural relationships among sustainable informativeness, sustainable functional value, ethical–emotional value, trust, and sustainable consumption behavior. Data were collected through an online survey of 304 Korean adult consumers with experience using digital accommodation booking platforms and analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results show that sustainable informativeness was positively associated with both value dimensions, and both value dimensions were positively associated with trust. Trust showed the strongest direct association with sustainable consumption behavior, whereas the direct association between sustainable informativeness and behavior was not significant. Significant indirect associations through value and trust suggest that sustainability-related information is more closely related to sustainable consumption behavior when it is useful, meaningful, and trustworthy. Practically, the findings suggest that platforms should design sustainability-related information to be not only visible but also comparable, interpretable, useful, and credible.