Ethical consumer decision‐making: The role of need for cognition and affective responses

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12178
• Author: Omneya Mokhtar Yacout,Scott Vitell
• Date: 01 April 2018
• Published date: 01 April 2018

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Ethical consumer decision-making: The role of need for

cognition and affective responses

Omneya Mokhtar Yacout

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Scott Vitell

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1

Professor of Marketing, Vice dean for

environmental and community affairs,

Faculty of Commerce, Alexandria University,

ElChatby, Alexandria, Egypt

2

Department of Marketing, School of

Business Administration, University of

Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi,USA

Correspondence

Omneya Mokhtar Yacout, Faculty of

Commerce, Alexandria University, P.O.

Box 21526, ElChatby, Alexandria, Egypt.

Email: omneya.yacout@alexu.edu.eg

Most of the academic research in the field of consumer ethics has focused on the cognitiveante-

cedents and processes of unethical consumer behavior. However, the specific roles of discrete

emotions such as fearhave not yet been investigated thoroughly. This researchexamines the role

of the need for cognition (NFC), the three affective responses—fear, power, and excitement—and

perceived issue importance on moral intensity, ethical perceptions, and ethical intentions for four

types of unethical consumer behaviors. A sample of consumers from the two cities of Alexandria

and Cairo, Egypt (n5346) participated in the survey. Most research hypotheses were supported.

NFC, issue importance, and affect variables were all predictors of moral intensity, ethical percep-

tions, and ethical intentions in four different consumer ethics scenarios. The specific predictors

varied from one consumerethics scenario to another, however.

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INTRODUCTION

Unethical consumer behavior createsfinancial, psychological, and social

costs for both consumers and marketers (Fullerton & Punj, 1993). Such

costs vary from loss of items and profits, as in the case of shoplifting,

to losing profits that could have been gained otherwise, as in the case

of software piracy. Such behavior also creates an unsettled consump-

tion experiencefor other consumers who behaveethically but are victi-

mized by the misconduct of others (Fullerton & Punj, 2004).Generally,

consumers in many countries are not concerned withthe ethical issues

related to their purchase behavior (Belk, Devinney, & Eckhardt, 2005)

and the use of technological devices to deter thisbehavior has not suc-

ceeded in reducingit (Fullerton & Punj, 2004).

Traditionally, researchers in the field of ethical decision-making

have focused on rational or cognitive antecedents associated with

ethical decision-making underscoring the role of otherpertinent factors

(e.g., Ferrell & Gresham, 1985; Hunt & Vitell, 1986).Recent reviews of

the antecedents of ethical decision-making point out two gaps in the

mainstream literature. The first gap relates to the scarcity of research

examining information processing related to variables such as the need

for cognition (NFC) (Craft, 2013; Lehnert, Park, & Singh, 2015;

Mudrack & Mason, 2013).The NFC, which indicates the individual dif-

ference related to motivation to process information, has been largely

ignored by most researchers in the field of ethical decision-making in

particular, except for the study by Singer, Mitchell, and Turner (1998).

Without a thorough understanding of motivation, the cognitive

approach cannot explain the intricacies of human psychology (Higgins

& Kruglanski,2000, p. 1).

The second gap relates to underscoring the effect of affective

response in ethical decision-making models. Babin and Babin (1996)

were among the early researchers who examined the role of fear,

power, and emotional arousal in a shoplifting context. Recently,

Schwartz’s (2016)integrated model of ethical decision-making incorpo-

rated rational and non-rational antecedents with ethical decision-

making where emotion and intuition were the non-rational

antecedents. Similarly, Agnihotri, Rapp, Kothandaraman, and Singh

(2012) developed a cognitive-affective framework for ethical decision-

making among salespeople. With respect to affective responses, most

researchers have focused on antecedents such as moods (e.g., Clore,

Schwarz, & Conway, 1994; C^

ot

e, 2005) or dispositional tendencies

(e.g., Connelly, Helton-Fauth, & Mumford, 2004; Tangney, 1991;

Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007). Krishnakumar and Rymph (2012)

note that even among those who examined emotions, moral emotions

were the ones used. Emotions such as guilt and shame (e.g., Bray,

Johns, & Kilburn, 2011; Cronan & Al-Rafee, 2008; Kim & Johnson,

2014; Spraggon & Bodolica, 2015; Su, Lu, & Lin, 2011) were heavily

investigated. Only a few studies have examined non-moral emotions

even though their relationship with ethical decision-making has been

strongly supported in both non-marketing (e.g., Eisenberg, 2000;

Krishnakumar & Rymph, 2012; Skoe, Cumberland, Eisenberg, Hansen,

& Perry, 2002) and marketing contexts (Agnihotri et al., 2012;Babin &

Babin, 1996). Furthermore, scholars have not been able to provide a

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C2018 JohnWiley & Sons Ltd wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer BusinessEthics: A Eur Rev. 2018;27:1 78–194.

Received:11 May 2016

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Revised: 3 November2017

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Accepted:3 December2017

DOI: 10.1111/beer.12178

detailed account of the specific mechanisms through which emotions

affect moral judgments (Ugazio, Lamm, & Singer, 2012), particularly the

role that the various dimensions of emotion such as emotional arousal

and power play in ethical decision-making processes. Sekerka and

Bagozzi’s (2007) moral courage model addressed these two gaps as it

incorporated affective reaction and cognitive information processes as

antecedents to ethical decision-making. Their hypothesized relation-

ships were not empirically tested, however. This research aims to fill

these gaps by examining NFC, perceived issue importance, and affec-

tive responses asantecedents to perceived moral intensity, ethical per-

ception, and ethical intentions for four types of unethical consumer

behavior. Whileintegrating the NFC and affective responsesis consist-

ent with research in thefield of information processing that argues for

a dual-processingmodel (e.g., Greifeneder, Bless,& Pham, 2011;Shiv &

Fedorikhin, 1999), perceived issue importance reflects an individual’s

perceptions of the specific situation (Robin, Reidenbach, & Forrest,

1996). Integrating these variables will provide a thorough understand-

ing of the role of cognitive information processes as antecedents to

ethical decision-making.

Thus, the findings of this research are relevant across many areas

of inquiry, including consumer behavior, cognition, decision-making, in

general, and ethical decision-making. Furthermore, the research is con-

ducted in Egypt,which can be described as an emergingeconomy with

a cultural and economic background that differs from those of devel-

oped countries where most of the ethical consumer decision-making

research was conducted. Egypt can be describedas a society with high

power distance and high levels of uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede,

1984) and neuroticism (Lynn & Martin,1995). In these societies, higher

levels of anxiety, fear,and anger prevail (Basabe et al., 2000), and thus

the effect of affective responses on ethical decision-making might be

different from other societies with lower power distance, uncertainty

avoidance, and neuroticism. Chiu and Hackett(2017) note that real-life

perceptionsof ethicality are also culturally determined. Thus, examining

ethical decision-making in different cultural contexts offers a better

understanding of its complexities, one that cannot be achieved by

focusing only on a few developed countries.

From a practicalpoint of view, marketing managers whosecustom-

ers consider the ethical implications of their purchases have a vested

interest in how consumers resolve moral dilemmas; they may want to

influence how consumers resolve such dilemmas (Marks & Mayo,

1991) to identify specific segments that might be more sensitive to

emotional appeals in marketing communications. This way, they can

then design message interventions that may cause people to buckle

their seatbelts,recycle, or adopt low-fat diets (Griffin, Neuwirth, Giese,

& Dunwoody, 2002). In addition, such knowledge will help retailers,

whether local or international, conducting business in emerging mar-

kets like Egypt to develop strategies that aim to deter their customers

from such behavior.

This paper startswith a review of the literature relatedto cognitive

ethical decision-making models. Then a discussion of the role of moral

intensity, NFCaffect and perceived issue importance in these modelsis

presented. A discussion of the research methodology, findings, and

research implications follow.

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ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING:

AREVIEWOFTHELITERATURE

The literature on ethical decision-making can be classified into two

main classes, the efforts that attempt to explain how the process of

ethical decision-making takes place and the efforts directed toward

understandingthe antecedents to ethical perceptionsand intentions.

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The process of ethical decision-making

The cognitive perspective has dominated ethical decision-making for a

long period of time. According to Kohlberg’s theory of cognitive moral

development (Kohlberg, 1981), three levels of moraldevelopment take

place according to the social perspective base from which individual

actors function: the personal, the group norms, and the ethical stand-

ards, respectively. Individuals have cognitive reactions to ethical situa-

tions based on their stage of cognitive development (Trevi~

no, 1986).

Later, Rest (1986) proposed a four-component model of ethical

decision-making which includes moral sensitivity, moral judgment,

moral motivation,and moral character. Hunt and Vitell (1986) notethat

the moral process begins with perception of the ethical situation, then

evaluation of the outcomesof each behavioral alternative, followed by

ethical judgments, moral intentions, and finally behavior results.

Similarly, Ferrell and Gresham’s (1985) contingency framework posits

that ethical decisions are followed by behavior which is in turn

followed by an evaluation of behavior.

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Antecedents to ethical perceptions and

intentions

Other researchers tried to identify the antecedents to the ethical

decision-making process. In this respect, many variables were exam-

ined. These variables include those related to the environmental con-

text (Hunt & Vitell, 1986), organizational variables such as the ethical

context (Valentine, Nam, Hollingworth, & Hall, 2014), and individual

variables such asknowledge, attitudes, values, andintentions (Ferrell &

Gresham, 1985), personal experience (Hunt & Vitell, 1986), value sys-

tems (Jackson,Wood, & Zboja, 2013), ethical ideologies, Machiavellian-

ism, locus of control and moral reasoning (Mudrack & Mason, 2013),

moral identity and self-control (Rua, Lawter, & Andreassi, 2017), NFC

(Street, Douglas, Geiger, & Martinko, 2001), and affective responses

(Babin & Babin, 1996; Harris, 2008). The ethical issue itself was

also identified as a contextual antecedent (Ferrell & Gresham, 1985;

Jackson et al., 2013;Jones, 1991).

The following subsections will discussthe effect of moral intensity,

NFC, affect, and perceived issue importance as antecedents to ethical

perceptionsand intentions.

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Moral intensity

Jones’contingency model (1991) posits that moral intensity is a

multidimensional construct that captures the extent of issue-related

moral imperative in a situation. It includes the characteristics of the

moral issue such as magnitude of consequences, social consensus, and

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