Shared Responsibility for Sustainable Consumption in E-Commerce? Spirituality and Digital Sustainability Efficacy in the Value–Belief–Norm Chain

Whether people buy sustainably may depend not only on their values, but on what they believe the retail platform makes possible. This study develops that argument by extending Value–Belief–Norm theory among UK online shoppers. It introduces beliefs about digital sustainability efficacy, a channel-level belief about whether online platforms support sustainable choices, and places spirituality at the value stage of the chain. A quota sample of 487 UK online shoppers, matched to ONS benchmarks for age, gender, and region, was surveyed through Prolific, and the model was estimated using structural equation modeling with bootstrap mediation analysis. Channel-level efficacy beliefs predicted moral obligation and reached behavior only through personal norms, independently of beliefs about environmental consequences. Spirituality predicted the chain through the belief stage, while religiosity, a single-item control, showed no effect. Personal norms were the strongest proximal predictor of behavior. What online shoppers believe about their platforms thus feeds the moral basis of sustainable consumption in general, which speaks to the argument that responsibility for sustainable consumption is shared between consumers and the channels through which they shop. Spirituality, an experiential rather than doctrinal orientation, emerges as a value antecedent for the chain in a secularized market.