Socio-Cognitive Determinants of Consumers’ Support for the Fair Trade Movement

Abstract

Despite the reasonable explanatory power of existing models of consumers' ethical decision making, a large part of the process remains unexplained. This article draws on previous research and proposes an integrated model that includes measures of the theory of planned behavior, personal norms, self-identity, neutralization, past experience, and attitudinal ambivalence. We postulate and test a variety of direct and moderating effects in the context of a large survey with a representative sample of the U.K. population. Overall, the resulting model represents an empirically robust and holistic attempt to identify the most important determinants of consumers' support for the fair-trade movement. Implications and avenues for further research are discussed.Keywords Attitude-behavior gap; Consumer ethical decision making; Ethical consumerism; Fair trade; Theory of planned behavior 2 3 IntroductionResearch on ethical consumerism has grown substantially since the 1990s and has provided valuable insights into the ways people respond to the moral and environmental challenges of living in contemporary consumption environments.However, the literature remains limited, and additional work is necessary for a comprehensive and unified understanding of the role of ethics in consumption. In this endeavor, some authors concentrate on developing models of consumer ethical decision making, often drawing on socio-cognitive models originally applied in other fields, such as Ajzen's (1985Ajzen's ( , 1991 theory of planned behavior (TPB), Schwartz's (1977) model of norm activation, and Hunt and Vitell's (1986, 1992) general theory of marketing ethics. These models build on the premise that consumers' ethical judgments (or related attitudinal constructs) are consistent with their behavioral intentions, which in turn are an effective proxy for actual behavior in most circumstances (Fukukawa, 2002). Nonetheless, studies on ethical consumerism have consistently challenged this premise owing to the widespread observation of the gap between attitudes and behavior (e.g., Bray et al., 2011; Carrigan and Attalla, 2001; Carrington et al., 2010). For example, consumers often buy environmentally hazardous products regardless of their expressed concern for greener alternatives (Devinney et al., 2010).Although various theoretical explanations for the attitude-behavior gap are available in the literature (e.g., Bray et al., 2011; Carrington et al., 2010; Chatzidakis et al., 2007), on an empirical level, surprisingly few studies have attempted to provide a more comprehensive approach to narrowing that gap. So far, the dominant approach to increasing the amount of variance explained in ethical intentions or behavior has been the addition of variables that may have an effect alongside established attitudinal 4 constructs. For example, in applying the TPB to ethical consumer behavior, Shaw and colleagues (Ozcaglar-Toulouse et al., 2006;Shaw and Clarke, 1999;Shaw and Shiu, 2002a, 2002b, 2003Shaw et al., 2000) suggest the addition of personal no...

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“…Fair trade has also become the most common context in which to study ethical consumption in the last decade making our findings comparable to existing literature (Andorfer and Liebe 2012; Carrington et al 2010;Chatzidakis et al 2015). …”

Ethical consumer behaviour in Germany: The attitude‐behaviour gap in the green apparel industry

“…Also, Armitage and Conner (2001) admit that 80% of the behaviour remains unexplained by Ajzen's theory. In the empirical studies identified (Auger & Devinney, 2007;Chatzidakis et al, 2014;Chatzidakis et al, 2006), attitude-behaviour gap requires therefore a more holistic approach, considering the complexity of the determinants affecting and hindering pro-environmental behaviour.…”

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“…Since these items capture the common denominator of justifiability for the neutralization construct regardless of the type of excuses used, they should suffice for the purpose of this study. From a practical perspective, measures of Chatzidakis et al () also have the advantage of simplifying the survey considerably for the respondents given the many measurement items included in this research. The full list of items is provided in Appendix .…”

“…For me, not complying with the organizational information security policies and procedures is justifiable. Chatzidakis et al (2016) 2. I have many arguments against complying with the Work ethical climate:…”