Knowledge Constraint on Consumer Boycott Against Global Businesses' Social Sustainability Violations

Abstract

Sustainability concerns of both businesses and consumers are increasing. For a more sustainable world, businesses should prioritize sustainability in their operations, and consumers should support these practises by their purchasing power. However, it is still seen that even global businesses commit sustainability violations, and some consumers fail to boycott them even though they have motivation and intent. There are many constraints that limit the intent to turn into action. Knowledge about the violation stands out as a prerequisite among these constraints. In this quantitative research, consumers' boycott motivation and intent are examined in the context of social sustainability violations of Apple and Amazon, without giving the names of the companies. Then, the knowledge of the sample is questioned related to the commiters of the violations. Results show that more than two third of the sample has high motivation to boycott these companies and the relationship between boycott motivation and intention is statiscally significant. However, nearly half of the motivated consumers do not know the committer of the violation in each case. Consumers who are motivated and identify the committer in the cases are about one-third of the sample. The most remarkable result of this research is that consumers have severe knowledge limitations on the enforcement power of businesses in penalizing their violations. This exploratory study gives insights into the knowledge constraints on consumer boycotts against social sustainability violations of global businesses. However, the results can not be generalizable. More similar research focused on different cases is required. For practitioners, the foundation of an organization that can handle communication regarding sustainability violations is recommended to increase consumers' knowledge.