Signals that are related imperfectly to actual quality will mislead those consumers choosing/to choose to rely upon these inaccurate signals.
In the provided context, is choosing and to choose interchangeable?
Or do they provide a different meaning?
This is a complicated sentence:
Signals that are related imperfectly to actual quality will mislead those consumers choosing/to choose to rely upon these inaccurate signals.
Let's simplify:
Some signals will mislead people (choosing/to choose) to rely upon them.
These two choices have very different meanings.
The first one, "choosing", means:
1) Some signals will mislead people choosing to rely upon them.
1) Some signals will mislead the people who are choosing to rely upon them.
1) Some signals will mislead people who trust them.
1) Some signals will mislead people who [had already] decided to trust them.
The second one, "to choose", means:
2) Some signals will mislead people to choose to rely upon them.
2) Some signals will trick people, and cause people to choose them.
2) Some signals will trick people into choosing them.
So:
The first one (choosing) says that the people already decided to trust them. We don't know why they chose to trust the signals.
The second one (to choose) says that the people decided after the signals misled them to trust the signals.
They are both correct in your sentence but don't have the exact same meaning, so it depend what you mean by "interchangeable".
