Ethical Claims Research Articles

Saving the Vicuña: The Political, Biophysical, and Cultural History of Wild Animal Conservation in Peru, 1964–2000

Abstract This article examines national efforts to protect wildlife in the twentieth century. Its focus is the vicuña, a small llama-like species native to the Andes, which nearly went extinct due to the high economic value of its wool. Instead, the Peruvian national government—despite significant regime shifts—intervened to put in place and then perpetuate a series of conservation measures, including trade restrictions and a territorial reserve, that protected the population and allowed it to rebound. Using a combination of cultural, economic, political, and biological methods to understand the animals and people concerned about them, this article argues that conservation reoriented relationships among people and wild animals. Cultural affinities led to ethical claims about the animal’s value as well as utilitarian arguments about its potential economic worth for community and economic development. Moreover, the vicuña themselves shaped both the landscapes and the conservation programs with their biological habits. Saving the vicuña proved to be a complex social process that challenged facile assumptions about past environmental actions of politically volatile, economically marginalized, and socially divided nations.

Addressing harm in moral case deliberation: the views and experiences of facilitators

BackgroundIn healthcare practice, care providers are confronted with decisions they have to make, directly affecting patients and inevitably harmful. These decisions are tragic by nature. This study investigates the role of Moral Case Deliberation (MCD) in dealing with tragic situations. In MCD, caregivers reflect on real-life dilemmas, involving a choice between two ethical claims, both resulting in moral damage and harm. One element of the reflection process is making explicit the harm involved in the choice. How harmful are our decisions? We investigated how facilitators of MCD experience the importance of addressing harm in MCD and what participants learn from reflecting on harm.MethodsThe study was qualitative, focusing on the views and experiences of the facilitators of MCD. Semi-structured interviews (N = 12) were conducted with facilitators of MCD. The research focuses on the subjective experiences of facilitators. Grounded Theory was used for analysis.ResultsThe results show two main categories. The first concerns the awareness of tragedy. Within this category, five themes were discerned: making explicit that there is no solution, visualizing consequences, uncovering pain, focusing on emotion, and exploring perspectives on harm. The second category concerns the support for healthcare professionals in dealing with the tragedy of the choices they face. In this category, five themes came forward: acknowledging, offering comfort, managing harm, consideration through dialogue and repairing harm.ConclusionOur study shows that addressing harm in MCD in tragic situations provides an important moral learning opportunity for participants. By formulating and becoming aware of harm, MCD aids healthcare professionals in the task they are faced with, namely making difficult and painful choices. MCD helps healthcare professionals to repair moral damage, making clear at the same time that harm cannot be undone.

Good Enough Justice?

This essay contends that Stanley Cavell’s criterion of “good enough justice,” which designates the minimal condition of social justice necessary for his perfectionist understanding of ethical selfhood, constitutes an avoidance—rather than an acknowledgment—of the problem of injustice. Taking Cavell’s misreading of Walter Benjamin as exemplary of this tendency, the essay shows how Cavell’s moral perfectionism consistently converts questions about the suffering of others into a problem of the self and its conscience, thereby avoiding the ethical claim at the heart of Benjamin’s project.

Towards a better understanding of values in sustainability transformations: ethical perspectives on landscape stewardship

ABSTRACT Values are considered an essential but ill-defined element in sustainability transformations. This perspective article explores: What kinds of values guide thinking and action in the context of caring for nature and engaging for landscape sustainability? How do these different values relate to each other? To frame our study, we discuss three basic principles in ethical reasoning. Prudence highlights the instrumental values of nature. Justice puts general moral obligations at the center. The Good Life focusses on relational values that are important to people in terms of personal life-goals. We show that all three types of values are expressed in landscape stewardship conceptualizations. As two case studies demonstrate, the relevance of these ethical claims may diverge among actors, which can lead to different goals and pathways. It is therefore crucial to develop multifaceted strategies that are tailored to the complexity of values at stake. A lack of communication on ethical claims may result in conflict and blockade of sustainability initiatives. For harnessing the full potential of values for sustainability transformations, the specific ethical dimensions of reasoning need to be made explicit and partial interests and common goods and rights need to be distinguished as arguments with different levels of legitimacy and power.

Levinas and Løgstrup on the Phenomenology (and Metaphysics?) of Moral Agency

AbstractFor both Levinas and Løgstrup, the moral encounter is characterized by an asymmetrical prioritization of the other over the self. Some take Løgstrup’s account to be an improvement on Levinas’s, however, insofar as it appears to both foreswear the hyperbole of the latter’s view and ground the ethical claim in the natural conditions of human life (thereby avoiding Levinas’s alleged nominalism). This paper argues, in contrast, that Løgstrup’s own account is equally hyperbolic in its characterization of the self as fundamentally evil, and that his attempt to ground the ethical demand in structures of ‘life’ raises serious difficulties. I will argue that Levinas’s stronger commitment to phenomenology both rules out the problematic metaphysical claims on which Løgstrup’s ontological ethics depends and helps explain the methodological function of Levinas’s own hyperbole. Unlike Løgstrup, Levinas insists that the challenge is not eradicating the claims of the self, but rather resisting its pretention to a global normative priority. In making this case I refute the argument that Levinas, unlike Løgstrup, is committed to a ‘command’ view of morality—whereby it is the other person’s authoritative status that underwrites the moral force of the claim, not the content of the claim itself. But on Levinas’s view, ‘demand’ and ‘command’ accounts merge in his understanding of the face-to-face encounter because responding to the content of the demand—that I treat the other’s claim as reason-giving—just is to see the other person as an authority capable of making legitimate claims on me.

Constructing Universal Values? A Practical Approach

AbstractThis essay explores the possibility of universal values. Universal values do not exist as Platonic ideals nor do they exist in clearly defined lists of rules or laws. Rather, universal ethical claims are constructed through the actions of individual political leaders, scholars, and activists. This essay explores how such normative constructions take place. It uses an initiative undertaken by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime to further education around corruption as an example of how such universal values come into existence. The initiative focused on developing teaching materials for higher education. The essay focuses on two particular modules, both their content and the process by which they were written.

If you think about it more, do you want it more? The case of fairtrade

Purpose There are substantive disagreements about whether encouraging deliberative thinking increases consumer preference in low-involvement product categories. The authors draw on dual-process theory to add rare experimental evidence to this debate. They also investigate whether the effect of deliberative thinking increases with familiarity of the stimuli, as different theories of memory yield different predictions on this point. Finally, they provide evidence on whether the effectiveness of the Fairtrade logo arises more from mere exposure or attention to the ethical claim. Design/methodology/approach The context for the research is the use of ethical logos in packaged coffee, as this provides a realistic setting for the desired experimental manipulations. The fieldwork consists of two sets of trade-off experiments – rankings based conjoint analysis (n = 360) and best-worst scaling with a balanced incomplete block design (n = 1,628). Deliberative thinking is manipulated in three ways: by varying logos between visual (Type 1 processing) and lexical (Type 2 processing) treatments, by post hoc classification of time taken, and by imposing either time constraints (Type 1) or cognitive load (Type 2) on the completion of the task. Familiarity is manipulated by varying logos between the Fairtrade and a fictional Exchange Ethics logo. Findings Consumers do have higher preferences in the deliberative treatment conditions; thinking more results in an 18 per cent increase (Cohen’s d = 0.25) in the preference for choices that display an ethical cobranded logo. Surprisingly, the impact of deliberation is not greater for the more familiar Fairtrade logo than the fictional Exchange Ethics logo. This result is inconsistent with strength-based theories of memory, as these predict that deliberation will have a greater effect for more familiar stimuli. However, it is consistent with newer theories of memory that acknowledge familiarity can lead to activation confusion, reducing retrieval of pre-existing knowledge into working memory. The research also shows that the Fairtrade logo has substantial utility to consumers, and that this is approximately 59 per cent due to the ethical claim and 41 per cent due to the familiarity of the logo. Research limitations/implications In field conditions, attempts to manipulate deliberation may not be effective or may simply result in reduced attention. Also, the costs of increasing deliberation may outweigh the benefits obtained. Practical implications The research confirms the heuristic value of the Fairtrade logo and shows that the effectiveness of ethical logos may increase with additional deliberation by shoppers. Originality/value There is relatively little work in marketing that applies dual-process theories to investigate consumer behaviour. The present study extends the use of dual-process theories in marketing, demonstrates a new method to investigate the effect of deliberation on brand choice and shows how deliberation magnifies the effect of endorsing logos, including unfamiliar logos.

Donors, authors, and owners: how is genomic citizen science addressing interests in research outputs?

BackgroundCitizen science is increasingly prevalent in the biomedical sciences, including the field of human genomics. Genomic citizen science initiatives present new opportunities to engage individuals in scientific discovery, but they also are provoking new questions regarding who owns the outputs of the research, including intangible ideas and discoveries and tangible writings, tools, technologies, and products. The legal and ethical claims of participants to research outputs become stronger—and also more likely to conflict with those of institution-based researchers and other stakeholders—as participants become more involved, quantitatively and qualitatively, in the research process. It is not yet known, however, how genomic citizen science initiatives are managing the interests of their participants in accessing and controlling research outputs in practice. To help fill this gap, we conducted an in-depth review of relevant policies and practices of U.S.-based genomic citizen science initiatives.MethodsWe queried the peer-reviewed literature and grey literature to identify 22 genomic citizen science initiatives that satisfied six inclusion criteria. A data collection form was used to capture initiative features, policies, and practices relevant to participants’ access to and control over research outputs.ResultsThis analysis revealed that the genomic citizen science landscape is diverse and includes many initiatives that do not have institutional affiliations. Two trends that are in apparent tension were identified: commercialization and operationalization of a philosophy of openness. While most initiatives supported participants’ access to research outputs, including datasets and published findings, none supported participants’ control over results via intellectual property, licensing, or commercialization rights. However, several initiatives disclaimed their own rights to profit from outputs.ConclusionsThere are opportunities for citizen science initiatives to incorporate more features that support participants’ access to and control over research outputs, consistent with their specific objectives, operations, and technical capabilities.

Genesis as Torah: Reading Narrative as Legal Instruction

Genesis as Torah: Reading Narrative as Legal Instruction

An Ethical Claim for Administration of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PREP) in HIV and AIDS Burdened Africa

It is morally justifiable for every person of good will to venture into HIV and AIDs prevention among the populace. Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) administration promises to help meet the promise of this moral claim, which is founded on two ethical principles of ensuring wellbeing and justice for all. In spite of the efforts, challenges abound, especially in Africa. Some African tenets of sexuality, unavailability of contextualized and harmonized African sexuality theory as well as Africa’s poor economic standing are major threats to the administration of PrEP. This paper highlighted the major challenges and calls for their resolution if PrEP administration is to be of help to the poor and HIV burdened Africans.Key Words: HIV prevention, Preexposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), well-being, justice

The Securitization Dilemma

Abstract Motivated by the neglect of uncertainty and perverse consequences in constructivist studies of security, this article pursues a reconceptualization of the security dilemma. Approaching the dilemma as a “logic of self-limitation” constituted by choice, uncertainty, and tragedy, the article explores how this logic can be transposed to the constructivist context of securitization theory. The resulting “securitization dilemma” draws renewed attention to the unintended character of social life, highlights how the choice to engage in practices of threat construction are shaped by uncertainty, and shows how the failure to recognize these limitations can have tragic consequences. While the argument aims to broaden the empirical focus of securitization studies to include perverse and unintended consequences, it also looks to engage with the literature's distinctive ethical claim over how speaking security is never a neutral act. Political actors may well be responsible for the security claims they make, but we need to recognize that this responsibility includes the effects of security claims that actors anticipate, as well as those they do not.

Encountering Finitude, Confronting Infinitude: Leo Tolstoy, Emmanuel Levinas, and the Ethics of Non-Resistance

This article follows a strand of ethical thought that weaves itself throughout Leo Tolstoy’s religious writings: the injunction of non-resistance. This ethical position has been described by some critics as a form of religious idolatry in Tolstoy’s work. I challenge that claim in this article by deploying the work of Emmanuel Levinas to provide much needed nuance to Tolstoy’s call for non-resistance. Via the ethical framework provided by Levinas, I contend that Tolstoy’s positions are built upon a conception of the finite world that sees a proper comportment to finitude as the mode by which one engages the infinite. This ethical call is one that escapes satiation by demanding a ceaseless act of non-resistance—which is, for him, the essential kernel of the Christian message. Tolstoy’s God, I argue, is this infinite demand; something akin to an ethical claim that marks the subject—a mandate that is met when one enacts the ethical obligation of non-resistance.

A Tale of Two Façades: Archaeology and the Secularization of an Islamic Past

This article examines how certain forms of preservation work to recast the past in rigid terms of secular and religious. Focusing on a series of early Islamic period sites in the Levant, collectively known as the Umayyad qusūr (sometimes referred to as “desert palaces”), this essay traces the ways in which scholars signal the realms of the secular through interpretation of architectonics and iconography. This process of secularization is then further advanced through practices of preservation and display within colonial and nationalist museum contexts on a grand scale. At stake are ethical claims about the value of religion, specifically Islam, in larger discourses of culture and civilization. The paper explores the role played by these approaches to the material past of the early Islamic world for how they perform and police the boundaries of religious and secular materiality.

Moral impasses in sustainability education? Empirical results from school geography in Austria and Germany

The expert-driven and normative character of sustainability education aims to promote societal transformation and global change. While some authors underline the ethical claims of education, others have criticized that there is a problematic tendency to prescribe certain actions beyond ethical education. The article aims to provide an empirical contribution, including students’ and teachers’ perspectives, and geography textbooks, to the debate. Based on the results of an empirical study with 1001 secondary school students in Austria and Germany, we discuss the “ethical turn” and the moral code in sustainability education. The questionnaires are completed with students’ drawings, qualitative interviews with geography teachers and an analysis of geography textbooks. We argue that most students have a precise idea what sustainability and sustainable behavior means, but they harbor right-wrong binary perceptions of sustainable lifestyles. Many students lack knowledge of the interdependence of consumption and production networks, which impedes the understanding of complex sustainability patterns. Therefore, we recommend pluralistic and interconnected perspectives in sustainability, in the frame of school geography. A more democratic classroom contributes to develop an own moral compass. Additionally, passion and participatory approaches can help students reflect on their affective relationships with consumer goods and consider alternative consumption-production paradigms.

Educational neoliberalization: the mediatization of ethical assertions in the voucher debate

ABSTRACTThis study focuses on the evolving ethical claims and empirical evidence being advanced within U.S. media relating to voucher-style programs. As such, the research seeks to better understand how and why these policies proliferate, despite scant evidence recommending them. Our specific media focus reflects the recognition that issues, problems, and solutions are defined and set within ‘ethical’ frameworks through the media, often in efforts to influence the polity. Framed by the concept of ‘neoliberalization’, the analysis notes dominant discourses and activities by both advocates and opponents around the issue. Specifically, the research reveals shifting ethical assertions. Media-based ‘choice for all’ advocacy, and support of generalized parent choice/empowerment via voucher reforms, have become more prominent, while advocacy related to expanding choice for the disadvantaged has receded (though with certain high-profile exceptions). Meanwhile, opponents engage in what sometimes appears as more reactionary, though still active, media participation in seeking to challenge such reforms.

Self-Knowledge: Based on Knowledge of the First Cause of Creation (Aristotle’s Conception of the Soul)

This article argues that Aristotle depicts the soul as a detectable aspect of one’s being, is in the form of properties, and is discernable by cognition. Thus, he proposed that it is possible to discern the complementary connection between one’s being and the first cause of creation. Aristotle, like Kant, recognised that the age-old problem of scepticism posed a challenge to epistemological, ontological, and ethical claims. However, Kant did not develop his ideas regarding bridging the gap between what is demonstrable and the first cause of creation – which resulted in perpetuating problems with scepticism and dualism. Consequently, in the effort to resolve the problems of scepticism and dualism, to promote self-actualisation, holistic well-being and, to help individuals realise their full potential there is a resurgence of Aristotle’s explanation of the relationship between self-knowledge and knowledge of the first cause of creation.
 This article contributes to the philosophy of science, the philosophy of the social sciences, the philosophy of religion, to contemporary literature on social psychology, and to literature addressing the interface between the sciences and perennial philosophy by demonstrating that Aristotle’s perennial wisdom and his epistemic approach – based on logical positivism – resolve problems related to scepticism, materialism, and dualism.

As a Translator and Reader of Judith Butler in Korea

As a Translator and Reader of Judith Butler in Korea Hyosil Yang (bio) I became a Korean translator of Judith Butler's works purely by chance. In 2006, I taught a newly created lecture on feminist aesthetics and art at the Department of Aesthetics, Seoul National University. Having just finished my doctoral dissertation on Baudelaire's modernity, I had to study feminist methodologies day and night to meet SNU's smart feminist students in that class. At the end of the first semester, the students suggested reading Judith Butler together, which was my first introduction to her and her work. Because I was familiar with the discourses of poststructuralism, I was easily drawn into Butler's sophisticated and sincere ways of thinking. First "we" read that (in)famous book, Gender Trouble, and several essays from the Judith Butler Reader edited by Sara Salih. After that, we chose to read Precarious Life, which I then translated and published in Korean in 2008. Thus far, I have translated three books, and I am now translating a fourth, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. After countless readings alone or together with students, I have come to memorize her sentences. I even speak as if I am Judith Butler. In particular, I have embodied some parts of Precarious Life and Giving an Account of Oneself. Her writing style and ways of thinking have become parts of my own writing, especially when I write about artists' exhibitions. As "we" all know and will agree, Judith Butler's deconstructive thoughts are primarily critical of the modern subject and power in the regime of representation. Thus her texts are very difficult to read and understand, even for [End Page 135] those who majored in philosophy. They require meticulous and concentrated readings. At the same time, her texts—classified as ethics and political philosophy—are poetic. They trace human sorrow and suffering in the ruins of humanism. During my lectures, I teach students how to read her texts in the context of poststructuralism, while at the same time listening to their feelings about her peculiar "figure" of writing. Her texts are not only about undoing the logic of identity, but also about making us crying animals. So, we read her texts as an elegy. Even while translating, I sometimes fall into a sorrow and have even cried. Many readers have told me they also cry in reading her texts. Some read her texts as philosophy and others read them as prose. I translated Butler's texts word for word with prudence because I believe what is most important when we read Butler is to follow the "play" of her disjunctive logic. Her writing is not for the majority nor for knowledge-power/pleasure. Women, queers, artists, and wounded people—in other words the marginal (in Butler's words, the human?)—have reacted enthusiastically to her key words, such as dispossession, passivity, exposure, susceptibility, and livability. When reading Giving an Account of Oneself, I ask my students why there appears to be almost no example or illustration making her ethical claim "clear" and concrete. Although they can't articulate in clear language, they explain why the book, in distancing from abstract and "universal" thoughts, has almost no concrete examples based on actual violence. If I can translate their feelings faithfully but obliquely, it is that her writing touches their singular wounds and solitudes resisting symbolic language. When I read in front of them, I stumble and sometimes fall into silence because I can't translate her sentences properly in common symbolic languages. We share silence and that silence makes us what we are, both individually and in common, or both singular and plural. Often I read her lines without any explanation, fearing I might distort the message. On September 21, 2018, I gave a lecture at the Refugee Human Rights Center in Seoul. Previously, refugee problems in Korea had not been discussed. But around June of this year, hundreds of refugees came to Korea from Yemen, and Korean hatred of Islam had emerged and become a social issue. At the end of the two-hour lecture, I read part of chapter 6 of Notes Toward...

Ghostly Narratives and the Limits of Fiction

Ghostly Narratives and the Limits of Fiction Hannah Manshel (bio) Haunting Encounters: The Ethics of Reading across Boundaries of Difference by Joanne Lipson Freed. Cornell University Press, 2017. 220 pp. Cloth $55.00. Joanne Lipson Freed's Haunting Encounters: The Ethics of Reading across Boundaries of Difference is a valuable addition to the scholarly conversation about the writing and reading of silenced histories. Lipson Freed argues that the "ethical and imaginative claims of fictions that unsettle us with their difference" make space for ethical encounters between readers and texts that depict cultures different from their own (3). Focusing primarily on the way texts by and about people of color can have material effects on the ethical actions of white readers, Lipson Freed posits haunting—within the bounds of narrative—as an ethical mode of relation that requires neither identification on the basis of similarity nor absolute alterity, between reader and text. "Haunted fiction," she writes, "encourages its readers to interrogate the assumption that reading fiction, in and of itself, can be an ethically significant act" (24). Without making claims that fictional narratives can actively remedy the violence of omission or produce more just encounters, Lipson Freed is bold enough to make a small claim: that the ethical encounter of haunted reading matters on its own terms. Each of the four main chapters pairs two narrative texts from different cultural contexts and shows how haunting, which she characterizes as an "intense, temporary, [End Page 281] and ultimately transformative encounter with unfathomable difference" (36), opens onto ethical relationships both among characters and, more importantly for her argument, between fictional narrative and reader. The first and strongest chapter pairs a canonical work of haunted fiction—Toni Morrison's Beloved—with a Bengali novella, Mahaswete Devi's "Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha." The novella, which is Lipson Freed's only subject not originally written in English and which, significantly, is translated by Gayatri Spivak, becomes something of an anchor for Haunting Encounters, appearing repeatedly to demonstrate different facets of the ethics of haunted reading. Lipson Freed locates within the texts she discusses the very haunted ethics of reading for which she advocates between reader and text. "Pterodactyl" is about Puran, a bourgeois Indian journalist sent to report on a famine in a tribal village. Despite his presumed worldliness and his wealth of empirical knowledge, Puran has trouble connecting with the tribal people about whom he is writing. An encounter with a pterodactyl—a living impossibility—leads Puran to have more ethical relationships with both the people in the village and his own family at home. Lipson Freed reads the pterodactyl, which Puran must attempt to care for and communicate with in the absence of reference-book knowledge, as a transformative haunting figure. The pterodactyl is different enough to challenge Puran's sense of relationality but similar enough to invite his empathy—for both the pterodactyl and for the villagers. In Beloved, the eponymous ghost challenges both Sethe's and the reader's claims to knowledge, "de-stabiliz[ing] meaning-making" for the other characters and for readers (46). In both texts, the supernatural creatures act as "ethical guides" for both the characters and the readers. Puran's encounter with the pterodactyl and Sethe's encounter with Beloved are encounters with difference that vex knowledge and that, because they are painful, are ultimately temporary but nonetheless provide an opening onto an ethical encounter. Importantly, Lipson Freed carefully argues that these creatures are not merely metaphors or symbolic standins for the silences of history, but rather are more capacious figures through whom we might imagine the possibilities of ethical relation across difference. In the following chapters, the book moves away from textual appearances of actual supernatural figures to discussion of the way this ethics of haunting works in the telling of the historical traumas of colonization, in "human rights novels" about people who [End Page 282] have been "disappeared" by repressive governments and in novels set in "dystopian" presents that are "haunted by futures that they themselves cannot presage" (136). The primary strength of Chapter 2, which focuses on Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, is its pointed...

Psychiatric approach to violent behavior in severe mental illness — Violation of human rights?

Summary In the modern western world severe mental disorders in prisoners are quite common. Medical ethics claims access to medical care for all people, which includes access to mental health care. Regarding compulsive treatment of chronic psychiatric disease in Germany, a change of paradigm has taken place during the last decade. The right of an individual suffering from psychosis to refuse treatment had been strengthened and the options to applicate compulsory pharmacological treatment have dwindled. Therefore, a rising numbers of individuals have dropped out of community mental health care and many are living homeless and almost forgotten in the shelters of the big cities. Therefore, prisons must deal with a rising number of mentally ill individuals incarcerated because of impulsive and aggressive behavior who are refusing pharmacological treatment and but who are severely ill when entering mental health care in prisons. Options for treatment and ethical consequences are discussed.

Buy good, feel good? The influence of the warm glow of giving on the evaluation of food items with ethical claims in the U.K. and Germany

Food products with ethical claims are stacked on supermarket shelves in ever increasing numbers, but their share of total food sales does not usually climb above a one-digit figure. Numerous consumer studies have investigated the motives of consumers to purchase food items with ethical claims, as well as the potential purchase barriers. The presented study merges these insights with the concept of the warm glow of giving, which originates from public good theory, as we enlist food items with ethical claims as private goods with public good characteristics. The warm glow of giving reflects personal gain from an act of altruism. How the warm glow influences the intention to purchase food items with ethical claims, and the actual food choice, is the core question of this paper. Going into more depth, prosocial (fair-trade) and pro-environmental (organic and carbon-neutral) claims are explored separately, and cross-cultural differences are pointed out. The empirical analysis is based on a representative consumer survey in the U.K. (n = 452) and Germany (n = 465) which incorporated a choice-based conjoint analysis. Both are mature markets for food items with ethical claims, yet with varying degrees of market penetration for prosocial and pro-environmental claims. Our results suggest a higher level of warm glow in the German sample, leading to a generally larger influence of the warm glow on the evaluation of ethical claims as compared to the U.K. Overall, the fair-trade claim is affected more positively by the warm glow than the pro-environmental claims, which can be explained by its stronger public good characteristic as compared to the organic claim and its perceived health benefits. Additionally, label awareness is a necessary precondition for any warm glow effect as the results of the carbon-neutral claim show. These findings are indicative for the use of the warm glow for marketing and social marketing strategies in order to increase the sales of food products with public good characteristics.