Disembedded consumption increases perceived justice

Abstract

The traditional theorizing of social justice analyzed people's perceived justice in a bounded society or institution. This conceptualization, however, has limitations in interpreting justice in a boundaryless society with high mobility of people and commodities, which is the reality of contemporary lives. We, therefore, introduce a new concept, “disembedded consumption” (i.e., one's consumption is not constrained by its grounding in the local context of a restricted time and space), to reinterpret social justice. Across five studies, we demonstrate that either human mobility or product mobility can predict disembedded consumption which increases people's perceived justice through heightened resource accessibility. Moreover, we provide further evidence that human mobility and product mobility can be compensated with each other to have a positive effect on disembedded consumption and consequently on perceived justice. The current research for the first time introduces “disembedded consumption” as a consequence of human mobility and product mobility and contributes to the literature on social justice.