Human-Centric Digital Product Passports: Enabling Verifiable Information Sharing for Sustainable Consumption through Wallet-Based Identity Management and Zero-Knowledge Proofs

Abstract

Empowering end consumers with transparent product-related information is seen as a promising way to drive sustainable consumption choices and counter the global sustainability challenges. To foster this endeavor, Digital Product Passports (DPPs) are a potential solution to share product-specific data across supply chains, aiding informed consumer decisions and supporting sustainability. However, DPPs often involve the collection of sensitive information about supply chain actors and their processes. Hence, this paper aims to develop a DPP prototype that provides end-consumers with increased and verified information. We utilize wallet-based identities, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and zero-knowledge-proofs (ZKPs) to design a DPP for the textile industry that facilitates the transfer of verifiable information, lowering information asymmetries between humans and organizations and equips value-chain stakeholders with a means to verifiably share data. Our study seeks to bridge the design gap for a human-centric DPP infrastructure in IS literature by developing a sample infrastructure.