Ethical Consumption Practices Research Articles

Moral disengagement and neutralization techniques as explanations of unethical behavior

AbstractEthical consumption is important for both consumers and social welfare. However, many consumers avoid or ignore ethical consumption practices. An explanation of the psychological processes that impede ethical behavior is important research. A survey of 436 American consumers reveals that various types of moral disengagement (behavior and victim loci) and neutralization techniques sequentially explain unethical consumer behavior. From a theoretical perspective, both these constructs are relevant in this context, yet prior research utilizes these constructs separately or conflates them. Moreover, findings show that a particular type of moral disengagement, the agency locus, paradoxically promotes ethical consumer behavior. This research also examines locus of control (chance) and trait cynicism as antecedents of unethical consumer behavior. Locus of control (chance), not trait cynicism, leads to less ethical consumer behavior through moral disengagement and neutralization techniques. Insights benefit consumers, marketers, and policymakers in promoting ethical consumption that enhances consumer well‐being.

Ethical consumption: why should we understand it as a social practice within a multilevel framework?

This article discusses the importance of a multilevel and intertwined understanding of ethical consumption given its conjunction with other social practices. Although the literature on ethical consumption is vast, the role of sociotechnical regimes including technological and cultural elements, infrastructure, market and regulation has been mainly overlooked in this literature. This may be so because ethical consumption practices that refer to other-oriented consumption practices are mainly considered in the view of the motivations and preferences of individual consumers. Due to the insufficiency of individualistic approaches in explaining stimulators and inhibitors of ethical consumption, there might be "various constraints" and "competing demands" in society which limit the formation of "ethical consumption". Therefore, to avoid an oversimplified view of ethical consumption, this paper contributes with a theoretical discussion on combining social practice theory (SPT) with a multi-level perspective (MLP). Although the SPT is a very well-structured framework in consumption studies, the necessity of a combined approach concerns the often-insufficient attention paid to structural prerequisites of various consumption forms in social practice theories. By understanding ethical consumption practices according to a multi-level framework, the paper emphasizes the importance of structural factors at macro- and mesolevels. It also contributes attention to how ethical consumption grows due to dialectical processes between levels, showing that niche practices can simultaneously challenge and rely on existing regimes.

The digital labor of ethical food consumption: a new research agenda for studying everyday food digitalization

This paper explores how consumers’ ethical food consumption practices, mediated by mobile phone applications (apps), are transformed into digital data. Based on a review of studies on the digitalization of ethical consumption practices and food apps, we find that previous research, while valuable, fails to acknowledge and critically examine the digital labor required to perform digitalized ethical food consumption. In this paper, we call for research on how digital labor underlies the digitalization of ethical food consumption and develop a conceptual framework that supports this research agenda. Our proposed conceptual framework builds on three interconnected analytical concepts—datafication, affordances and digital labor—that enable the study of digital labor as an infrastructural element of digitalized food consumption. We illustrate our conceptual framework through our previous research concerning Buycott, a US-based mobile app whose stated aim is to facilitate consumers’ ethical purchasing decisions. Using the walkthrough method, we consider how the Buycott app engages user-generated data and what implications this holds for consumers. The app’s infrastructure, we suggest, connects ethical consumption and digital labor. A richer understanding of the digital food economy, we propose, enables social scientists not only to elucidate how consumers engage in digital labor, but also to contribute to the development of new data governance structures in the digital food economy. We therefore call for social scientists interested in food, consumption and the digital economy to contribute to a new research agenda for studying everyday food digitalization by empirically examining how ethical consumption apps implicate ethical consumers’ work.

The Consumer Revolution, 1650–1800 by Michael Kwass

This book presents itself as a critical overview of the historical literature about the emergence of a consumer society in Europe and its colonial appendages during the period from 1650 to 1800. Since the groundbreaking work of McKendrick, who in 1982 identified a “consumer revolution” in this era—albeit one confined to Britain—this theme has attracted the attention of multiple historians in many countries who have both deepened our knowledge of the dynamic material world of this era and proposed explanations for its emergence and interpretations of its meaning.1 Kwass’ synthesis, which introduces readers to what is now a vast literature, seeks to identify the places where earlier interpreters have fallen short, proposing an agenda for a history of consumption that satisfies current requirements.Kwass interweaves two approaches to his topic. He begins and ends by treating the consumer revolution as a product of political and economic forces. He claims that the topic is important today because consumption is at the root of contemporary society’s most pressing problems, most notably global warming, income inequality, and racism. In his view, it is no accident that consumption is the source of so many evils today, given its creation at the intersection of imperialism and slavery. This fatal synergy “increased the influx of low-priced consumer goods into Europe,” which “is now seen as central to the consumer revolution” (73). The consumer society of the modern world has a lot to answer for, both in the circumstances of its birth and in its contemporary consequences. Kwass wants to convince readers that it should be brought to an end and replaced with ethical consumption practices (222).But, to return to Kwass’ historical topic, through which channels and which chains of causation did an influx of low-priced goods produce a revolution in consumer behavior in societies where, as Kwass notes, real wages did not rise and most people struggled to survive? Furthermore, by what standard was this influx “low priced”? Such claims require more rigorous forms of analysis than Kwass provides; his discussion tends to float on the surface of things.Fortunately, most of the book is not actually about external, supply-side shocks to Europe’s Early Modern economy. The bulk of the book is a fairly conventional discussion of selected aspects of the consumer cultures of the long eighteenth century, with particular attention paid to the elite material world of ancien régime France. Four of the book’s seven substantive chapters delve into the novel retail venues of the time, as well as the salons, cafes, and public promenades frequented by elite consumers. They also explore the so-called “reading revolution” of the age of Enlightenment and the uses of consumer goods in furthering the revolutionary movements of the age on both sides of the Atlantic.These chapters are all well referenced and well argued. The high point is chapter 4, in which Kwass discusses the cultural meaning of consumption. He begins with the premise that “there is no innate propensity to consume.” Therefore, “it is important to explore the cultural contexts in which meanings are forged and desires take shape” (99). “Consumption has a history” (4)—a history that accelerated in the long eighteenth century, tightly linked to the Enlightenment project. The consumer revolution of this age, which constituted an important step on the road to modernity, led directly to the creation of today’s universal consumer culture. Kwass might have elaborated more about the interrelationships to which he alludes between consumption, enlightenment, revolution, and the shaping of desires.Consumer behavior as a historical agent is not an easy topic for academic analysis, perhaps because it seems so obvious to us. We are all consumers, and we all have doubts and anxieties about our consumption choices. Indeed, consumption is the locus of everyday politics for most people today. Kwass is correct to claim that a historical analysis of how modern consumer society emerged is essential to understanding the options that now stand before us. Unfortunately, two distinct strands of analysis are essayed in this volume without being brought to satisfactory conclusions.

Ethical consumption: why should we understand it as a social practice within a multilevel framework?

This article discusses the importance of a multilevel and intertwined understanding of ethical consumption given its conjunction with other social practices. Although the literature on ethical consumption is vast, the role of sociotechnical regimes including technological and cultural elements, infrastructure, market and regulation has been mainly overlooked in this literature. This may be so because ethical consumption practices that refer to other-oriented consumption practices are mainly considered in the view of the motivations and preferences of individual consumers. Due to the insufficiency of individualistic approaches to explain stimulators and inhibitors of ethical consumption, there might be other components in society to lead (un)ethical consumption decisions. Therefore, to avoid an oversimplified view of ethical consumption, this paper contributes with a theoretical discussion on combining social practice theory (SPT) with a multi-level perspective (MLP). Although the SPT is a very well-structured framework in consumption studies, the necessity of a combined approach concerns the often-insufficient attention paid to structural prerequisites of various consumption forms in social practice theories. By understanding ethical consumption practices according to a multi-level framework, the paper emphasizes the importance of structural factors at macro- and mesolevels. It also contributes attention to how ethical consumption grows due to dialectical processes between levels, showing that niche practices can, at the same time, both challenge and depend on existing regimes.

Negative emotions, positive actions: Food safety and consumer intentions to purchase ethical food in China

Although ensuring food safety is still an urgent social issue in China, ethical consumption practices are relatively new, and ethical food is not widely consumed. Chinese consumers often face confusing information about a particular food product's safety and are concerned about the situation. Drawing upon stress coping theory, this study examines whether consumer confusion and negative emotions drive intentions to adopt ethical food. Data collected from a sample of 505 consumers were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results show that consumer confusion has a significant impact on negative emotions, which in turn influence intentions to purchase ethical food products. This research advances the food preference literature by providing a new perspective on ethical consumption based on coping strategies. The findings are important for policymakers and business leaders seeking to develop and better promote safer and more ethical food programs in China.

Addressing Rage: The Fast Fashion Revolt

Addressing Rage: The Fast Fashion Revolt

The limits of ethical consumption in the sex industry: An analysis of online brothel reviews

This article weighs arguments about individualised ethical consumption practices in the sex industry through an analysis of the narratives of men who buy sexual access to women in legal brothels in the state of Victoria, Australia. In order to consider claims of ethical consumption in the sex industry, a theoretical thematic analysis of 50 online brothel reviews is undertaken, focussing on potential expressions of “care and concern”. We find significant narratives of unprotected sex and questionable sexual consent, and that there is an almost complete lack of care or concern shown for the women described in these reviews. This calls into question the ethical consumption assumption in the legislation, and raises further questions about the applicability of ethical consumption concepts to the sex industry more broadly.

Do they Know it’s CSR at all? An Exploration of Socially Responsible Music Consumption

The increasing visibility and elevated status of musicians has become prominent in contemporary society as a consequence of technological advances and the development of both mass and specialized targeted audiences. Consequently, the actions of musicians are under greater levels of scrutiny and fans demand more from musicians than ‘just’ music. If the industry demands corporate social responsibility practices in a similar vein to how corporations promote themselves; a further question then remains regarding how the increasing prominence of such activities by musicians influences music consumers and fans of individual bands and artists. The current research provides a foundation upon which to better understand the role that social responsibility plays for consumers of music. Consequently, the research has practical implications for promoting socially responsible consumption practices. The various public spaces (concerts, festivals, retail outlets, social events, and social media) that music consumption encompasses represent great opportunities in which ethical consumption practices can be promoted. We identify a number of factors (level of expectations, authenticity and escapism) that ultimately determine when socially responsible engagement in the music industry is supported, ignored, or even becomes the focus of consumer backlash.

Solidarity, Sexuality, and Saving Muslim Women in Neoliberal Times

Desiring SolidaritySolidarity is a fundamental-even constitutive-concern of feminist theory and politics. Like a specter it haunts feminist imaginations periodically. Yet it is a slippery term. Certain expressions of feminist solidarity, we know, often gloss over divisions the name of unity. The pursuit of solidarity along these registers, I suggest, expresses a longing as much as it represents a political goal.1 Perhaps this desire (for home? for the transcendence of privilege and so a point of arrival?) explains the persistence or at least periodic revival of a language of sisterhood that is otherwise discredited.The trope of global sisterhood is especially powerful today; its affective power allows for its reinvention different idioms at different times. Most recently, neoliberal discursive regimes Euro-America have revived both global sisterhood and a politics of salvation/caring, deftly folding them into corporate marketing strategies. So it is that, for instance, the Whole Foods grocery store chain solicits donations for its microcredit programs for women in the developing world, as part of its stated mission to produce a future without poverty. In the same vein, the French luxury cosmetics company Clarins's FEED 15 campaign, as an expression of its humanitarian values, provides meals to hungry children worldwide through the World Food Program.2 Both ventures appeal, different ways, to a global cosmopolitan feminist sentiment located the North. By implication, the present of women and children Europe and the United States excludes poverty and hunger.3In this short essay, I am mainly interested the discourses of solidarity and sisterhood opened up by the collapse of Rana Plaza Savar, Bangladesh, 2013, which over eleven hundred garment factory workers were killed. Not surprisingly, First World solidarity with Third World workers figured centrally the coverage following the disaster. As horrifying images of the tragedy and its aftermath circulated across global media, the incident was rendered a spectacle for consumption. Like other such events, it was open to the most incendiary mobilizations.The new socially conscious Pope Francis immediately denounced as slave labor the working conditions Bangladeshi garment factories (Bangladesh 'Slave Labor' 2013). A year later, at a conference convened by the International Labor Rights Forum called Women's Rights the Apparel Industry: Ending Violence, Empowering Voices, a participant declared, We want to take these women out of The head of the National Organization for Women, a rousing speech, also condemned as slave labor factory work places like Bangladesh and Honduras.It is not my intention to caricature individuals or impugn their motives. I do not doubt the sincerity of individual concerns, feminist or otherwise. My interest rather is the work of the trope of slavery. Like trafficking and forced labor, slavery performs a specific discursive-ideological function. Its persuasive power lies representing extremes such as the Rana Plaza collapse as being outside the legitimate liberal capitalist system rather than constitutive of the system itself.In contrast to such incendiary calls to solidarity, a more informed and nuanced transnational activism around sweatshop labor foregrounds the essential complicity of Northern corporations and Bangladeshi capitalists the making of incidents such as the Rana Plaza collapse. This is critical terrain, which labor activists Bangladesh work side by side with activists the United States.4 For the most part, however, antisweatshop campaigns hinge on the power of the affluent Northern consumer to save poor Third World women through the former's ethical consumption practices. Solidarity is decidedly vertical.The Marketplace of SolidarityAs indicated earlier, feminist solidarity of a neoliberal kind has been marketized the global economy. …

Ethical Food Consumption and the City

AbstractWhilst conceptualisations of ethical or alternative food emphasise places of production, spaces of urban ethical consumption are comparatively under‐theorised. I address this gap by considering ethical consumption in cities alongside ethical consumption of urban space. Attending to the spatiality of ethics in urban food, I examine how ethical consumption practices inflect city identities and how urban spaces shape ideas about being ethical, political or alternative. I draw on three themes: reconnection, ‘place‐frames’ and landscapes of production/consumption, referring to several contemporary urban food initiatives. These include formally accredited ethical places (Fairtrade and ‘Slow’ cities) and creative engagements with urban infrastructure.

Broadening the Scope of Ethical Consumer Behaviour

Consumption is an essential everyday process. By very nature, it is a means of expressing our moral identities and an outlet for ethical obligations. In more recent years, ethical aspects of consumption have come under greater scrutiny with the emergence of ethical consumption discourses, and are currently associated with a range of consumer behaviours and responsible business practices. To this end, religion is an undeniably powerful and concurrently the most successful marketing force that can shape the ethical behaviour, yet under-investigated in consumption practices despite Corporate Socially Responsibility provoked ethical behaviour. Ethical consumption practices are regularly characterised as consumption activities that avoid harm to other people, animals or the environment where basic Buddhist teachings become more pertinent and practiced in Buddhist communities. This study conceptualises the importance of religious beliefs in ethical consumer behaviour and through researcher introspection methodology, the study empirically explore whether and how ethical consumerism is reflected through Five Precepts of Buddhism [i.e. (1) abstain from taking life, (2) abstain from stealing, (3) abstain from sexual misconduct, (4) abstain from false speech, and (5) abstain from intoxicants that cloud the mind]. The study contributes to the theory and teaching in the marketing discipline by linking how religious beliefs enhance ethical consumerism that remains largely unexplored.

'소비와 윤리' 교과목 수강 대학생의 윤리적 소비에 대한 인식과 실천행동의 변화

The purpose of this research is to investigate changes in ethical consumption practices after taking an undergraduate course 'Consumption and Ethics'. Through Qualitative & Quantitative research methods, students' pre-course and post-course attitudes were compared to understand changes in behavior. Before taking the course 'Consumption and Ethics', undergraduate participants displayed little regard for ethical consumption, instead displaying primary sensitivity to price and values based on self-centered and conspicuous consumption. After taking the course 'Consumption and Ethics', participants displayed a more altruistic awareness of consumption on society and the environment. In addition, participants displayed a stronger sense of pride as ethical consumer. These emerging values were contrasted with conflicting feelings resulting from the higher prices often associated with ethical products, feelings of regret resulting from ethically-based impulse purchases, and an inability to categorically evaluate the reliability of available information on the ethical products. However, participants demonstrated a willingness to practice ethical consumption and recommend ethical consumption to their friends and neighbors. Overall, participants in the study demonstrated a strong shift to be an ethical consumer as a result of taking the course 'Consumption and Ethics'.

Keeping Up with the Greens: How Consumerism Hijacked Environmentalism and the Ideological Dilemma it Left Behind

This paper argues that consumerism, to be understood as an ideology, presents a series of challenges for contemporary politics and attempts to ameliorate environmental problems. Arguing that consumerism ought to be taken seriously as an ideology in political science literature, I discuss how consumerism is the “ism” that won the 20th century and continues to dominate the 21st century. The common and traditional political ideologies today (liberalism and conservatism) have embraced consumerism. As a result, consumerism attaches conceptions of identity, status, and non-economic value to consumer goods. The result is an ideology that pervades and influences spheres unrelated to the market. One such sphere is environmentalism. The paper explores the ideological dilemma of green or ethical consumption practices. It asks whether these acts of “good” consumption still reflect the consumerism ideology. Furthermore, the paper explores to what extent, if any, green consumption is a way to mask consumerism’s pervasiveness and negative aspects. Or, perhaps environmentalism is the best-suited ideology to tackle the growing pervasiveness of consumerism because it directly challenges consumerism’s core tenets of endless material acquisition and the value (economic and non-economic) attached to it. Ultimately the paper concludes that environmentalism ought to be wary of embracing consumerism (green or otherwise) as a fix for ecological degradation.

From Ethical Consumerism to Political Consumption

AbstractThis article reviews some of the recent literature in geography and related disciplines on ethical consumerism and political consumption. Many geographers began their engagement with questions of ethics, politics, consumption and consumerism inspired by critical theory, commodity chain analysis and a sense that geographical knowledge might have a central role to play in progressive social change. Since these early engagements, it has been established that consumption practices are rarely the practices of rational, autonomous, self‐identified consumers, and so‐called ethical consumption practices are rarely detached from organisations and their political activity. Over time, therefore, some researchers have gradually shifted their focus from consumer identities and knowledge to consumption practices, social networks, material infrastructures and organisations of various kinds. This shift in focus has implications – both for the field of political consumption and for how the discipline of geography relates to this field.

Ethical consumption practices: co‐production of self‐expression and social recognition

Abstract Ethical considerations regularly demand references to the moral climate, which, as a form of grand narrative or regime of truth, provides direction for choices between right and wrong, good and bad, ethical and unethical. Yet from a postmodern perspective, the moral climate has scattered into countless narratives, such that what is good or ethical may no longer be certain everywhere and in every situation. In a postmodern world, no essential grand narrative, regime of truth, or foundational ethical direction exists, because the self has been rendered free and autonomous from traditional values. As an independent agent, the postmodern self confronts a plethora of possibilities. Although the confrontation of multiple narratives appears in radical postmodern theory as saturating and disorienting, this article posits that clear signs of ethical directions within postmodern pluralism remain. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.