Boycott them! No, boycott this! Do choice overload and small‐agent rationalization inhibit the signing of anti‐consumption petitions?

Abstract

The Internet and social media have increased the number of organizations and individuals asking consumers to sign petitions against transgressing brands. This raises a question as to whether such increases in requests to sign a petition to support a boycott positively or negatively impact on consumer willingness to enact anti-consumption. Via experiments, this study investigates the effect that choice overload has on consumers signing a petition in support of a boycott call. The findings establish that individuals who need to make a choice from numerous boycott calls (i.e., large choice-sets) are less likely to sign a petition to support a boycott than individuals making a similar choice from a small number of boycott calls (i.e., small choice-sets). The study further introduces a mediator that explains this effect. Compared with individuals facing a small choice-set, those facing numerous options are more likely to experience the small-agent rationalization, and thus, are less likely to sign the petition to support a boycott. The small-agent rationalization (SAR) relates to one's acceptance of inequity in the world as well as perceptions of their own powerlessness. The study establishes the role of choice overload in boycott literature and empirically tests SAR as the process mechanism.Theoretical, practical, and policy implications are discussed. K E Y W O R D Santi-consumption, boycott, choice overload, inequity, petition, powerlessness, sign a petition, small-agent rationalization

“I will defend your right to free speech, provided I agree with you”: How social media users react (or not) to online out‐group aggression

“…Negative word of mouth is problematic for SNS because people rely heavily on information from peers and consider such information as relatively trustworthy (Berger, 2014). Research shows that morally questionable behaviors often spark protests in the form of negative word mouth (Antonetti & Maklan, 2016), petitions (Yuksel et al, 2020), and boycotts (Hawkins, 2019). In this vein, we expect that user bans considered as unjust and as violating the right to free speech will be opposed through negative word of mouth.…”

Vanishing Boycott Impetus: Why and How Consumer Participation in a Boycott Decreases Over Time

“…In his seminal article, Friedman (1985, p. 97) describes consumer boycotts as "… an attempt by one or more parties to achieve certain objectives by urging individual consumers to refrain from making selected purchases in the market place." Activists have called consumer boycotts to achieve economic, social, ecological, ethical, ideological, or political objectives (Friedman, 1999;Sen et al, 2001) with regard to diverse issues including prices, human rights, working conditions, environmental protection, animal welfare, religion, or international politics (Yuksel et al, 2020). Boycotts can be direct or indirect (Friedman, 1999).…”

Can we anti‐consume our way to sustainability? Finding answers at the intersection of cultural values

“…This allows individuals to effectively allocate psychological resources to serve their prioritised goals (Vancouver et al, 2008). Moreover, self‐efficacy enables identification of more efficient strategies to reach the goal (Tabernero & Wood, 1999), and past research has highlighted the role played by self‐efficacy in predicting brand‐related anti‐consumption behaviours such as consumer boycotts (Balabanis, 2013; Yuksel et al, 2020). We argue therefore that self‐efficacy helps individuals to perform challenging behaviours like brand avoidance.Hypothesis Self‐efficacy will positively influence brand avoidance .…”