# Nudging Sustainable Choices through LLM-Generated Recommendation Explanations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.25726 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.25726/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 140 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Jul 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [ChatGPT Outperforms Crowd-Workers for Text-Annotation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15056/) (2023)
- [LLM Evaluators Recognize and Favor Their Own Generations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13076/) (2024)
- [Bridging Language and Items for Retrieval and Recommendation: Benchmarking LLMs as Semantic Encoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03952/) (2024)
- [Explainable Recommendation: A Survey and New Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.11192/) (2018)
- [A Survey on Conversational Recommender Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00646/) (2020)
- [A systematic review and taxonomy of explanations in decision support and recommender systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.08672/) (2020)
- [Digital Nudging with Recommender Systems: Survey and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03413/) (2020)
- [On Explaining Recommendations with Large Language Models: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19576/) (2024)
- [Impact of Tone-Aware Explanations in Recommender Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05061/) (2024)
- [Recommender Systems for Good (RS4Good): Survey of Use Cases and a Call to Action for Research that Matters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.16645/) (2024)
- [Recommender Systems for Social Good: The Role of Accountability and Sustainability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05964/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recommender systems mediate everyday consumption, offering a promising channel for encouraging sustainable choices. Prior research shows that explanations influence users' perceptions of recommendations and can support more informed decisions. We argue that explanations can also serve as behavioral nudges by foregrounding sustainability information at the moment of choice. This study investigates how different behavioral framings of sustainability information in recommendation explanations affect user choices and perceptions. Using generative AI, we generate sustainability-aware explanations by drawing on nudge theory and validate them through human evaluation and LLM-as-a-judge audits. Building on this foundation, we conduct two randomized studies (N = 529) in a low involvement domain (instant coffee) and a high involvement domain (hotel bookings), in which participants choose among preference matched recommendations accompanied by these explanations. Our results show that, across both domains, merely disclosing sustainability information in explanations does not change choices, whereas framing that information or invoking a descriptive social norm significantly increases sustainable selections and eases decision-making. Notably, perception and behavior diverge, as plain disclosure improves explanation evaluations without translating into more sustainable selection behavior. Our work demonstrates how LLMs can generate theory-grounded explanations at scale, pointing toward practical explanation-based interventions for social good. We conclude by discussing implications for adaptive explanation design with generative AI.