Goal-Driven and Stimulus-Driven Attention in Sustainable Investing: An Eye-Tracking Experiment

Abstract

Although the distinction between top-down and bottom-up attention is well-established in the literature, organizational research on the interaction of both processes is still fragmented. Drawing on the attention-based view of the firm (ABV), we investigate how organizations can employ attention structures to influence individual decision-makers’ attention and choices bottom-up. Extending the ABV’s structural view of attention, we additionally explore how individual decision-makers’ top-down processes shape their attention and choices, independently and in concert with an organization’s structural determinants. Our analysis is grounded on an eye-tracking based choice experiment in the realm of sustainable investing, in which we manipulate the salience of sustainability information that is channeled to decision-makers and measure individuals’ priorities for self-transcendence values. Our results provide strong support for top-down processing as self-transcendence increases attention to and importance of sustainability information in choice. We additionally find that the centrality of information, as opposed to its visual contrast, moderates the relationship between values and early attention, and subsequent downstream effects on relative attention and choice. Overall, our findings suggest that organizational structures can be harnessed to increase the importance of sustainability information at the individual level. Yet, respective measures may be more effective when implemented in an unobtrusive manner.