The effects of idealism and relativism on the moral judgement of social vs. environmental issues, and their relation to self-reported pro-environmental behaviours

Abstract

Many studies have demonstrated that moral philosophies, such as idealism and relativism, could be used as robust predictors of judgements and behaviours related to common moral issues, such as business ethics, unethical beliefs, workplace deviance, marketing practices, gambling, etc. However, little consideration has been given to using moral philosophies to predict environmentally (un)friendly attitudes and behaviours, which could also be classified as moral. In this study, we have assessed the impact of idealism and relativism using the Ethics Position Theory. We have tested its capacity to predict moral identity, moral judgement of social vs. environmental issues, and self-reported pro-environmental behaviours. The results from an online MTurk study of 432 US participants revealed that idealism had a significant impact on all the tested variables, but the case was different with relativism. Consistently with the findings of previous studies, we found relativism to be a strong predictor of moral identity and moral judgement of social issues. In contrast, relativism only weakly interacted with making moral judgements of environmental issues, and had no effects in predicting pro-environmental behaviours. These findings suggest that Ethics Position Theory could have a strong potential for defining moral differences between environmental attitudes and behaviours, capturing the moral drivers of an attitude-behaviour gap, which continuously stands as a barrier in motivating people to become more pro-environmental.

The Dilemma of Postmodern Business Ethics: Employee Reification in a Perspective of Preserving Human Dignity

“…Several studies conducted in recent years demonstrate that the tendency to rationalize ethical norms is related to the pursuit to ensure greater competitiveness and satisfaction of one’s own interests ( Khan et al, 2019 ; Zaikauskaite et al, 2020 ). Although the neo-Marxist critique of capitalism accentuates the need for ethical standards to ensure that respect to employee dignity is observed in business practices, the problem of basic ethical principles becomes difficult to solve in the postmodern world, considering what is regarded as truth.…”

Marketing ethics education and consumer wisdom: conceptualizing the relationship

“…One of the most popular theories in the field is the Hunt-Vitell theory of ethics with its deontological and teleological views on moral philosophy (Hunt and Laverie, 2004). Other examples of ethical theories include idealism and relativism which determine one's ethical judgment and predict their ethical behavior (Aguirre et al, 2020;Zaikauskaite et al, 2020) as well as Kohlberg's theory of moral development (Ferrell and Keig, 2013). The integration of such philosophical theories establishes a theoretical understanding for students.…”

Contribution of Service-Learning and Supporting Factors to the Environmental Sustainability Commitment of Higher Education Institutions

“…They believe that the contextual factors and the stakeholders of the decision-making process have the decisive influence in choosing the appropriate moral behavior (Forsyth & Nye, 1990). A recent study, conducted by Zaikauskaite et al (2020), empirically tested the capacity of moral idealism and relativism concepts to predict social and environmental attitudes and behaviors, by using the well-documented Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ) (Forsyth, 1980). They found significant relationships between moral idealism and both social and environmental attitudes and behaviors.…”

“…The development of students' moral judgment is possible only if HEIs can influence the level of moral idealism, provided that the previous research shows the links between idealism and pro-environmental attitudes/behaviors, which do not seem to be present for the case of moral relativism (Zaikauskaite et al, 2020). Such reasoning is, additionally, supported by the discussion of the place and role of ethics and social responsibility in business education (Smith & Rönnegard, 2016), presupposing that relevant students' attitudes and the resulting behavior can be influenced, or even transformed, by higher education.…”

“…Those supporting factors are viewed from the perspective of students (Kagawa, 2007). Based on previous research of individual ethical characteristics, and their influence to pro-environmental attitudes and behavior (Zaikauskaite et al, 2020), we choose to study students' moral idealism and relativism as representative individual ethical factors. On the other hand, social trust proves to be the cornerstone of bridging and bonding social relationships, enabling individuals, organizations and communities to create normative expectations and shared presumptions (Sydow, 2006), which serve as a starting point for building service-learning partnerships.…”