Outsourcing the Ethical Choice: The Green Delegation Gap in Sustainable Consumption. An Integrative Review

Abstract

 Artificial intelligence in commerce is shifting from advising consumers to acting on their behalf, as autonomous agents increasingly research, compare, and execute purchases with diminishing human oversight. This article examines a specific and under-appreciated consequence of that shift for sustainable consumption. Sustainable choice is distinctively dependent on credibly signalled, trust-laden attributes and on a deliberate willingness to bear a price premium condition that have long produced a persistent gap between green attitudes and green behaviour even when the consumer executes the purchase. When an autonomous agent executes it instead, optimising for the attributes most legible to it, the sustainability signal is precisely the one least likely to survive. Through an integrative review organised by the Theory–Context–Characteristics–Methodology framework, the study synthesises two active but disconnected literatures sustainable consumption and AI delegation and identifies a theoretically loaded void at their intersection. It develops the Green Delegation Gap framework, which reconceptualises the attitude–behaviour gap for delegated choice, specifies the agent's attribute-weighting and the transmission of sustainability signals as mediating mechanisms, and positions consumer resilience, economic uncertainty, involvement, green authenticity, brand transparency, agent transparency, and culture as moderators. The framework is bidirectional: delegation may widen the gap or, under calibrated trust and sustainability-configured agents, narrow it. The article advances testable propositions, a research agenda, and implications for brands, agent designers, and policymakers.