The Interplay of Top-down, Bottom-up, and Covert Attention Processes in Consumer Choice

Consumer choices are guided by top-down (goal-driven), bottom-up (stimulus-driven), and covert (attention without eye movement) processes, yet their combined influence remains underexplored.We address this gap by examining how the visual salience of climate impact labels, sustainability-related motivation, and covert attention interact to shape food choices. In a within-subjects eye-tracking experiment (N = 58; 1,597 choices), participants chose between meat and fish products that carried labels differing in visual salience and climate impact rating. Sustainability-related motivation was measured and used to classify participants into motivational subgroups. Motivation robustly predicted both attention and choice—highly motivated individuals fixated more on climate labels, spent more time viewing them, and were more willing to pay for low-impact options. High salience helped them filter out high-impact labels by reducing viewing time. Attention and motivation also interacted, with gaze amplifying internal goals among highly motivated individuals, whereas less motivated individuals more often relied on covert attention to select goal-congruent options. Among the highly motivated, salient goal-congruent labels increased choice likelihood when processed covertly, suggesting that salience can enhance label effectiveness without direct gaze. For less motivated participants, low-salience, high-impact labels more often guided choice covertly, indicating possible willful ignorance. We outline theoretical directions for future research on the interplay of attentional processes in consumer choice. Practically, the findings inform how to align label design with consumer motivation to support sustainable decision-making.