Ethical consumerism and wage levels: Evidence from an experimental market

Abstract

This paper contributes to the promotion of multidisciplinary research on ethical consumerism by providing experimental evidence on consumer's willingness to reward sellers by paying higher wages to their workers. We analyze repeated interactions occurring between workers, sellers, and consumers within the framework of an experimental market. By successfully performing a task, workers allow sellers to offer a good through a market. Sellers set the price of goods and decide the wages of workers. Consumers enter the market sequentially and decide whether to accept one of the offers or to leave the market. Our data show that, especially in the first periods of the experiment, some sellers opt to pay high wages to their workers. However, this behavior is not rewarded by consumers, whose purchasing choices are almost exclusively driven by self‐interest. In our interpretation, the connection between workers and sellers that connotes our experimental design, with workers who allow sellers to enter the market, may induce consumers to believe that eventual sacrifices for paying high wages to workers must be entirely on sellers. Our result suggests that the more salient is made the importance of some stakeholders in allowing the firm's activity, the fewer consumers' may be willing to sacrifice their monetary payoff to improve these stakeholders' condition.

How does consumer pressure affect green innovation of manufacturing SMEs in the presence of green human resource management and green values? A moderated mediation analysis

“…On the one hand, increased consumer pressure indicates that consumers are willing to pay for environmentally friendly products (Wong, 2013); hence the company will devote more resources to innovating new eco‐friendly products (Zhang & Zhu, 2019). This contrasts with Degli Antoni and Faillo (2022) who suggested that consumers, from an ethical perspective, may be less willing to reward the firm by paying their workers higher wages, believing that such sacrifice should be fully borne by their firm. Furthermore, by responding quickly to consumer pressure, businesses can form beneficial and diversified networks with their customers and get fresh and innovative ideas to aid in innovating eco‐friendly products (Roome & Wijen, 2006).…”

Uma Análise Exploratória Da Relação Entre Anti-Consumo E Consumerismo / Exploring the Relationship Between Anti-Consumption and Consumerism

“…O consumerismo de base ética envolve uma decisão consciente em consumir produtos de forma seletiva, com base nas crenças e valores morais do individuo sendo uma manifestação de preocupação moral com os produtos e organizações (Cho & Krasser, 2011;Dholakia et al, 2018;Lee, 2021;Antoni & Faillo, 2022). Teorização seminal de Smith (1990) sobre o consumerismo ético considerava o mesmo numa perspetiva negativa ao associar o consumerismo com a oposição por parte dos consumidores a certos produtos, marcas ou organizações.…”