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Ethical Consumption and Social Context: Experimental Evidence from Germany and the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Ulf Liebe
  • Veronika A. Andorfer
  • Patricia A. Gwartney
  • Jürgen Meyerhoff
Abstract
This research examines the role of social context in ethical consumption, specifically, the extent to which anonymity and social control influence individuals' decisions to purchase organic and Fair Trade coffee. Our research design overcomes biases of prior research by combining framing and discrete choice experiments in a survey. We systematically vary coffee growing method (organic or not), import status (Fair Trade or not), flavor, and price across four social contexts that vary in degree of anonymity and normative social control. The social contexts are buying coffee online, in a large grocery store, in a small neighborhood shop, and for a meeting of a human rights group. Subjects comprise 1,103 German and American undergraduate students. We find that social context indeed influences subjects' ethical consumer decisions, especially in situations with low anonymity and high social control. In addition, gender, coffee buying, and subjective social norms trigger heterogeneity regarding stated ethical consumption and the effects of social context. These results suggest previous research has underestimated the relevance of social context for ethical consumption and overestimated altruistic motives of ethical consumers. Our study demonstrates the great potential of discrete choice experiments for the study of social action and decision making processes in sociology.

Suggested Citation

  • Ulf Liebe & Veronika A. Andorfer & Patricia A. Gwartney & Jürgen Meyerhoff, 2014. "Ethical Consumption and Social Context: Experimental Evidence from Germany and the United States," University of Bern Social Sciences Working Papers 7, University of Bern, Department of Social Sciences.
    • Handle: RePEc:bss:wpaper:7
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Jean-Louis Pernin & Didier Tagbata & Andréas Eriksson, 2017. "From attitude to fair product purchasing behaviour: what are the contributions of peripheral attitudes and behaviours? [De l’attitude au comportement d’achat de produits équitables : quels apports ," Post-Print hal-03540156, HAL.
    2. Gianluigi Gallenti & Stefania Troiano & Francesco Marangon & Paolo Bogoni & Barbara Campisi & Marta Cosmina, 2019. "Environmentally sustainable versus aesthetic values motivating millennials’ preferences for wine purchasing: evidence from an experimental analysis in Italy," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-16, December.
    3. Sudbury-Riley, Lynn & Kohlbacher, Florian, 2016. "Ethically minded consumer behavior: Scale review, development, and validation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(8), pages 2697-2710.

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    Keywords

    ethical consumption; choice experiment; framing effect; social context; social norms;
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