The Role of Moral Foundations, Anticipated Guilt and Personal Responsibility in Predicting Anti-consumption for Environmental Reasons

Abstract

In response to the growing importance of environmental issues, more and more consumers are turning to anti-consumption by reducing, rejecting, or avoiding consumption. Covering the intersection of sustainable consumption and anti-consumption, previous studies relied on socio-cognitive models to explain this decision. In order to extend their findings, we consider the moral and emotional perspectives to examine reducing consumption for environmental reasons in a particular context, i.e. air travel. It is against this backdrop that we propose a conceptual model that includes moral foundations as the main antecedent, followed by anticipated guilt and personal responsibility, while intention to reduce consumption (i.e. air travel) for environmental reasons, positive word of mouth about reducing air travel (WOM) and environmental activism represent the outcomes. The proposed model is tested on a sample of 511 respondents from a UK online consumer panel. Our results confirm the importance of moral foundations, anticipated guilt and personal responsibility and their interplay in the prediction of intention to reduce consumption for environmental reasons. Anticipated guilt influences WOM, while personal responsibility influences activism. In addition, intentions to reduce consumption for environmental reasons have a positive impact on WOM and environmental activism. There are several implications for public policy makers and NGOs that fight against climate change that derive from these findings, as well as research opportunities for academics interested in this topic.

Go Green, Go Social: Exploring the Antecedents of Pro-Environmental Behaviors in Social Networking Sites beyond Norm Activation Theory

“…However, despite the wide penetration of SNSs, limited research attention has hitherto been devoted to the issue regarding how eco-message distributing on SNSs instigates people’s PEBs. In addition, since past works [ 14 , 29 , 30 ] have confirmed the motivational force of emotion (e.g., guilt) to take constructive actions (e.g., pro-social behavior [ 14 ], eco-friendly responses [ 15 ], ethical consumption, and recycle behavior [ 30 , 31 , 32 ]), guilt may play a role to encourage PEBs in our investigated context. This study thereupon constitutes a first attempt to explore this matter by integrating theories of NAT, guilt, and social stressors along with ETM, and empirically test them.…”

“…In essence, the motivational effect of guilt has been consistently found on interpersonal communication [ 14 ], advertising practices [ 15 ], marketing campaigns [ 39 ], and charity campaigns [ 42 ]. Recent studies have increasingly applied guilt to pro-environmental issues (e.g., ethical consumption and recycle behavior [ 30 , 31 , 32 ]) and confirmed its significant role in promoting altruistic behavior and pro-social behavior [ 29 ]. Surprisingly, to our knowledge no studies to date have incorporated the notion of guilt with NAT to investigate PEBs in the context of SNSs, thus leaving a gap to be bridged.…”

Conspicuous Anti-Consumption? The Motives of Anti-Consumption and their Connection to Conspicuous Consumption

“…Nowadays there is a growing wave of trends like social consciousness and environmental awareness which impacts consumer culture and consumption behavior (Hammad et al, 2019). As one consequence, more and more consumers are turning to anti-consumption (Culiberg et al, 2022) by abstaining from a particular type of consumption. In the following study, we focus on individual anti-consumption as the "intentional anti-consumption" of a particular product or service type consumed in the past, regardless of the possible consumption behavior a consumer might engage in to substitute the renunciation.…”

Kiel Journal of Consumer Studies 1

“…Nowadays there is a growing wave of trends like social consciousness and environmental awareness which impacts consumer culture and consumption behavior . As one consequence, more and more consumers are turning to anti-consumption (Culiberg et al, 2022) by abstaining from a particular type of consumption. In the following study, we focus on individual anti-consumption as the "intentional anti-consumption" of a particular product or service type consumed in the past, regardless of the possible consumption behavior a consumer might engage in to substitute the renunciation.…”