Exploring framing and spillover effects in sustainable logistics provider selection: Role of attentional biases

Recent supply chain research has called for more empirical investigations into how cognitive biases influence decision-making processes such as logistic provider (LP) selection. Grounded in behavioural theories, this study examines how supply chain managers’ cognitive biases, including framing and anchoring effects, influence sustainable LP choices. Furthermore, the study examines whether attentional bias towards framed information mediates the influence of framing on the evaluation of LP. Two behavioral experimental studies were conducted. The first study employs the experimental vignette methodology, wherein participants assume roles in procurement and supply chain management. The second study employs an eye-tracking device in a controlled experiment. Theoretically, this research contributes to the literature on behavioral operations, sustainable supply chains and decision framing in several ways. First, it empirically demonstrates that decision parameters framed in the gain versus loss contexts influence the selection of sustainable LPs, a decision traditionally modeled as a rational optimization problem in supply chain research. Second, it reveals specific spillover effects in LP evaluations, where a negatively framed environmental attribute influences the evaluation of unframed social attributes but does not influence unframed economic attributes. This finding extends framing research from single attributes to multidimensional evaluation contexts. Third, it observes a partially mediating role of visual attention in the relationship between framing and outcomes of LP evaluation, suggesting that other cognitive mechanisms may also influence LP choices. The study offers actionable insights for both buying firms and logistics providers about the influence of strategically framed communication of sustainability information on LP evaluations.