Ethics, consumption and the consumer

The literature within the topic of ethics and consumption has largely followed two streams of research. The first stream, consumer ethics literature, is principally

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Kim, 1999), whose misconduct ranges from the copying of computer software (Thong and Yap, 1998; Vitell, Lumpkin, and Rawwas, 1991) to the purchase of illicit goods (Albers-Miller, 1999). The second stream, the ethical consumption, has focused on more positive behaviours such as fair trade (e.g. Fridell, 2006) and green products and consumers (Laroche, Bergeron, and Barbaro-Forleo, 2001). Though examining different aspects of consumer behaviour, the unifying element of these two streams is ethics (i.e. in both cases the decision maker refers to whether to include or not ethical concerns in his/her judgment). Moreover the two streams are connected as advances in one area have informed research in the other. Within both literatures particular attention was paid to models of decision making that considered an ethical component. Some of these models focused on the societal level of ethical consumption and other models on the individual level, involving ethical issues in business (e.g. Ferrell and Gresham, 1985; Hunt and Vitell, 1986, 1993; Trevino, 1986) and ethical issues of consumers (e.g. Marks and Mayo, 1991;

Shaw and Shiu, 2002). The link between the individual and the societal, the models

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-Foeder, 1988).

In terms of individual psychological processes, the research interest has moved from

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and Vitell, 1986) to a consumer-oriented perspective (e.g. Mowen, 1990). Initially, much of the investigation into ethical decision making was hampered by the tensions between philosophy and ethical behaviour (see Marks and Mayo, 1991). These were

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deontological norms and teleological principles. This model was subsequently used by Marks and Mayo (1991) in the context of consumer behaviour which also identified the need to distinguish between self and other stakeholders in the modelling of the teleological process, as the decision-maker evaluates and chooses differently, depending to which party is likely to bear the consequences.

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Some of these studies highlighted the need to incorporate additional variables such as ethical obligation (e.g. Shaw and Clarke, 1999) and self-identity (e.g. Sparks and Shepherd, 1992) to increase the predictive ability of the existing model. Despite

“ “ extension of the TPB (i.e. by adding self-identity and ethical obligation) their results suggested the explanatory power of the model was still

limited; the attitude- G TPB

explaining consumer behaviour, the concept of neutralization has been used to

investigate con “ V P

and the attitude-behaviour gap (e.g. Chatzidakis, Hibbert, and Smith, 2007). These findings point out the necessity of updating existing models of consumer decision making through the inclusion of further variables in the modelling of consumer decision making. In line with this, emotions are patently a powerful category of variables. Previous research has already highlighted their potential in the explanation of ethical consumer decision making (e.g. Shaw and Clarke, 1999).

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(i.e. feelings such as remorse, shame, guilt, embarrassment, and anxiety) of those respondents selecting an unethical option, no further attention was paid to these emotions.

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dimension. The hedonic function and/or product utility are, to some extent, subordinated by concerns about right and wrong and consequences of consumption acts (Starr, 2009). Research in the area of ethical consumption is broad and long standing. Studies looking at the main areas of concern (e.g. Low and Davenport, 2007; Memery et al., 2005) confirmed the broad range of issues that consumers display i.e. from environmental issues to human rights and ethical trading, to food quality. Research on environmental issues investigated recycling (Jackson et al., 1993; Schultz, 2002), whereas considerations about human rights included labour conditions (e.g. Elliot and Freeman, 2001) and child labour (e.g. Edmonds and Pavcnik, 2002; Ranjan, 2001). Alternatively, ethical trading studies looked into fair trade products (e.g. Fridell, 2006; Golding and Peattie, 2005; Hira and Ferrie, 2006) and green products (Laroche, Bergeron and Barbaro-Forleo, 2001; Rowlands, Scott

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culture were also areas of interests for researchers who discovered the influence of cultural differences in the prioritisation of ethical issues (Belk, Devinney and Eckhardt, 2005; Sriram and Forman, 1993). Moreover, extant literature also highlighted the most likely factors to influence ethical decision-making (e.g. quality, price, convenience, brand) to the detriment of ethics (Cowe and Williams, 2000; Levi and Linton, 2003; McDonald et al., 2006), and the role of personal norms -social

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Williams, 2008), reasons for boycotting (John and Klein 2003; Klein, Smith, and John 2002), attitudes towards an unethical and pro-social behaviour (e.g. Muldoon, 2006;

Thogersen, 2005), values (e.g. Shaw et al., 2005), aspects of the decision making process (McDonald et al., 2009), and modelling of consumer rational decision making (e.g. Shaw, Shiu and Clarke, 2000; Shaw et al., 2006; Uusitalo and Oksanen, 2004).

However limited attention has been paid to emotions. Only a handful of studies have made reference to emotions and moods experienced in the context of ethical/unethical choices. For example, general feelings of discomfort (Szmigin, Carrigan, and McEachern, 2009) along with guilt (Dahl, Honea, and Manchanda, 2003; McEachern, Warnaby, Carrigan, and Szmigin, 2010) have been used to

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-Barton and Rogers (1980) found that guilt motivates a particular category of B

comprehensive study of emotions (both basic and self-conscious emotions) has been conducted in the ethical consumption.

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-unethical behaviour has not been achieved. Consumers claim the influence of values and intentions but this does not translate into practice. One explanation for this

attitudes and behaviour (Chatzidakis et al., 2007). Inconsistent choices and attitude-behaviour gaps of consumers who engage in ethical consumption have also been briefly reported by earlier studies (e.g. Carrigan and Attalla, 2001; De Pelsmacker, Driesen and Rayp, 2005; Schroder and McEachern, 2004). Another explanation put

(McEachern et al., 2010; Szimigin et al. 2009). McEachern et al. (2010: 397) describe

which -making environments

Another important stream of research in ethical consumption was preoccupied with

the definition and repr

Diamantopoulos et al., 2003; Memery et al., 2005) which can be influenced by education, income, gender, religion and area-specific norms in some ethical consumption situations (Starr, 2009). The profile of the ethical consumer has been undergoing continuous conceptual transformations as definitions included: the

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Wiener and Cobb-W . Prothero, 1990), the

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(e.g. Shaw and Clarke, 1999; Strong, 1996). Among these, the last term can be regarded as the most comprehensive one since it describes a consumer preoccupied by a variety of ethical issues.

This abundance of definitions indicates a lack of congruency in categorising the ethical/conscious consumer. For example, according to Webster (1975: 188), a

consequences of his or her private consumption or who attempts to use his or her

A ‘ ts (1993: 140)

services perceived to have a positive (or less negative) influence on the environment or who patronizes businesses that attempt to effect related positive social ch Perhaps this definitional inconsistency is due to the tendency to assume that there are essentially two types of consumers ethical and unethical ones; or at best that consumers can be located on a continuum of ethics (McDonald et al., 2006), moving between three main categories: non-voluntary simplifiers, beginner voluntary simplifiers and voluntary simplifiers, where beginner voluntary simplifiers include for

ethical M D H “

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categories according to their level of consumption i.e. consumers that maintain a certain level of consumption and consumers that reduce the level of their consumption.

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consumer is a fragmented and fickle creature, and an ethical identity becomes only one of many personas that a consumer can inhabit at a given time within a certain

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significant tranche of extant research provides a delineation based measurement scale scores in which actual behaviour is not adequately cross-referenced with attitude orientation (e.g. Follows and Jobber, 2000; Freestone and McGoldrick,

2008). The two explanations are interrelated and they call for a qualitative approach that would examine more closely the complexity and fragmentation of decision making in ethical consumption. There is some evidence for the proposition that, in the context of ethical consumption, consumers behave in a more complex and

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al

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-depicted by Low and Davenport (2007) as being concerned simultaneously with human/social welfare, animal welfare and environmental welfare, might be exceptions.

Despite the fact that studies such as those of McEachern et al. (2010) and Carrigan A raise an important point about the inconsistency of behaviour

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study is confined only to the context of food markets and their inventory of explanations for dissonant behaviour is limited to standard explanations such as time, convenience, costs, quality, pragmatism, knowledge pressures and reduced individual power. There is scope to extend the list of justifications offered by consumers both beyond a single consumption context and to other categories of

In conclusion, Section 2.6 presented the main areas of interest in ethical consumption and their findings. Overall, the predictive ability of extant models of decision making applicable to ethical consumption is rather limited and this might be explained by the overlook of other significant variables such as emotions. Even qualitative studies examining issues associated with ethical consumers showed very little interest in pursuing the non-rational side of ethical/unethical decisions. This research seeks to address this balance.

2.8 Investigating self-conscious emotions in the context of ethical