The Impact of E-Commerce Information Overload on Consumers’ Return Intentions: The Moderating Role of Perceived Environmental Effectiveness

Riddhi Wasan

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i06.60525

The Impact of E-Commerce Information Overload on Consumers’ Return Intentions: The Moderating Role of Perceived Environmental Effectiveness

Author(s)	Riddhi Wasan
Country	India
Abstract	The increasing frequency of product returns on e-commerce platforms has emerged as a critical issue, leading to substantial economic losses, heightened carbon emissions, and wasted social resources. While e-commerce platforms are designed to assist consumers in making informed and rational purchasing decisions through abundant product information, the overwhelming volume of data often has the opposite effect. Consumers encounter redundant, promotional, or even misleading information, resulting in perceived information overload—a state where individuals feel overwhelmed by excessive or complex data. This overload can impair decision-making ability, reduce satisfaction with purchases, and ultimately trigger impulsive buying followed by product returns. In this context, perceived information overload becomes a significant psychological factor influencing consumers’ intention to return products. When consumers feel unable to process the vast amount of information available, they are more likely to make hasty, emotionally driven purchases rather than thoughtful, rational ones. Once the product arrives, the mismatch between expectations (formed under information pressure) and actual product experience often leads to dissatisfaction and subsequent returns. This study will be an investigation of “How can we mathematically model the effect of choice-overload in e-commerce environments to explain irrational consumer behavior?” Despite extensive research on topics such as reverse logistics, return policies, and consumer decision-making patterns, few studies have directly examined the link between e-commerce information environments and post-purchase behaviors like product returns. Exploring this relationship provides a deeper understanding of how online information design and management affect sustainable consumption. It also highlights the need for e-commerce platforms to balance information richness with clarity, ensuring that consumers are guided by relevant, accurate, and manageable product information to minimize unnecessary returns and promote responsible online shopping behaviors. A quantitative survey method has been employed in this research paper which will be used to test the intermediate effects of cognitive dissonance and impulsive buying within the relationship between return intention and information overload. It is confirmed by the findings that extreme exposure to unorganized information can lead to increasing regret after purchasing and impulsive buying behaviour which will ultimately lead to higher product return rates. The implications of the study can be seen in the domains of managerial and sustainability which suggests that e-commerce platforms that reduce the cognitive load and streamline product information can lead to efficient outcomes such as enhanced consumer satisfaction and minimal environmental impact. This study also adds the expanding literature of behavioral economics research that looks at the emotional and cognitive processes that underlie consumer choice in digital environments. It bridges the gap between applied e-commerce management and theoretical psychology by abstracting the function of overload in irrational behavior quantitatively. Policymakers and platform designers who want to support transparent and sustainable online marketplaces may find value in the study’s pragmatic findings.
Keywords	E-commerce overload, choice overload, information overload, economic cost, cognitive dissonance, impulsive buying behavior, return intention
Field	Sociology > Economics
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 6, November-December 2025
Published On	2025-11-13
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i06.60525

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The Impact of E-Commerce Information Overload on Consumers’ Return Intentions: The Moderating Role of Perceived Environmental Effectiveness

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