Why bad feelings predict good behaviours: The role of positive and negative anticipated emotions on consumer ethical decision making
| Author | Marjan S. Jalali,Minoo Farhangmehr,Marco Escadas |
| Published date | 01 October 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12237 |
| Date | 01 October 2019 |
Business Ethics: A Eur Rev. 2019;28:529–545. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer
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529
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
1 | INTRODUCTION
It is a popular piece of t rivia that on average, we make 35.0 00 deci‐
sions a day; althou gh not all of these are conse quential, nor all ne ces‐
sarily conscio us or deliberate. Among the se, however, are decisions
which relate to what s ociety defin es as right or wrong—e thical de‐
cisions—and interest in these has been increasing across disciplines.
What leads us, f aced with such choices, whe re there is a “right” ver‐
sus a “wrong” de cision, to act in one way or anot her?
This issue has rece ived particu lar attention in t he realm of con‐
sumer behaviou r, from practitioners a nd academics alike, as et hics is
increasingly seen as a key element influencing consumer behaviour
(Schlegelmilch & Ö berseder, 2010; Schwartz, 2016). Intere st lies in
uncovering consum er decision maki ng processes invo lving ethical
issues, as well as ho w to influence them , and indeed, o ur under‐
standing of suc h processes has greatly evol ved over time.
Perhaps the mos t widely used mo del of ethical de cision mak‐
ing is Rest's (1986) four compo nent model of mor al deliberat ion,
according to which t he process of ethi cal decision mak ing encom‐
passes four main s teps: moral awar eness, mora l judgement, mor al
intent, and mor al behaviour. This mod el has been centr al to much
of the research in t he field of consumer ethic s; however, it has been
suggested tha t additional research is requ ired to further our under‐
standing of th e individual, situational , and issue‐related factor s that
can influence et hical decisio n making (Craf t, 2013; Lehnert , Park,
& Singh, 2015; Rua, L awter, & Andreassi, 2 017). This is partic ularly
Received:10Febr uary2018
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Revised:16Novemb er2018
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Accepted:2July2 019
DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12237
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Why bad feelings predict good behaviours: The role of positive
and negative anticipated emotions on consumer ethical
decision making
Marco Escadas1,2 | Marjan S. Jalali3 | Minoo Farhangmehr1
1School of Econo mics and
Management , University of Min ho, Braga,
Portugal
2Hospitalit y and Tourism School , Polytechnic
Institute of C ávado and Ave, Barcel os,
Portugal
3ISCTE Busin ess School, Unive rsity Institut e
of Lisbon, Lis bon, Portugal
Correspondence
Marco Escad as, School of Economi cs and
Management, University of Minho, Campus
de Gualtar, 4710‐057 B raga, Portuga l.
Email: mescadas@eeg.uminho.pt
Abstract
Research suggest s that emotions can g reatly influence consu mer decision making
andbehaviours.N otwithstan ding,ourunders tandingoftherole ofanticipatedemo‐
tions in what is an inheren tly complex deliber ation process—that of consumer e th‐
ics—is still quite limited . The present stud y thus aims to address thi s gap, in two key
ways: first, by meas uring the influence of positive and negat ive anticipated emotions
at each stage of the consu mer ethical decisio n making process; and s econd by de‐
scribing the speci fic emotions that mos t affect each com ponent of the consumer
ethical deliberation process and assessing their relative weight in predicting deci‐
sions involving ethica l issues. Through the examination of 60 3 ethical situations and
using multiple regression analysis, the findings indicate that anticipated emotions
can account for up to 59% of the vari ance in consumer decision s involving ethics.
Anticipating the ex perience of negative em otions as a result of carr ying out an un‐
ethical behaviour w as the affecti ve component found to mos t influence consumer
ethical deliber ation process; and anticipated guilt was the d iscrete emotion exerting
the greatest effe ct on consumer decis ion making in ethical s ituations. The fin dings
indicate that more th an feeling good, consum ers avoid feeling bad; such t hat ethi‐
cally favourable decisions emerge to prevent experiencing negative emotions in the
future.
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ESCADAS Et Al.
important , because we have p rogressed fro m the purely cogni tive
developmental approach to decision making more common when
this framewor k was developed, to a m ore multidime nsional under‐
standing of the ethical decision making process, which requires the
analysis of multi ple constructs (Mu drack & Mason, 2013) to improve
models' explan atory and predictive cap ability (Tenbrunsel & Smith‐
Crowe, 2008). O ne way to so is through t he inclusion of em otion
(Schwartz, 2016).
Indeed, emot ion has been a topic of g rowing interest a cross a
diversity of fi elds, and the field of consumer e thics is no exception.
The relationsh ip between emoti ons and consumer dec ision making in
situations involv ing ethics has been variousl y explored (Vitell, Kin g,
& Singh, 2013), with emp irical research sug gesting an influentia l role
of emotions on: the fo rmation of moral judgement s about unethical
behaviours ( Winterich, Morales , & Mittal, 2015); ethic al judgements
and purchase inte ntions of counter feits, grey ma rket product s and
imitations (Kim,Cho, &Johnson ,2009);i ntentionsto purchasesu s‐
tainable pro ducts in the future (A ntonetti & Maklan, 2014b, 2014a);
intentions to enga ge in ecological b ehaviours, su ch as recycling
(Elgaaied, 2012);and onethica lworkb ehaviours (Jacobs,B elschak,
& Hartog, 2014).
Most of this rese arch has focused on p ost‐decision emoti ons,
however, where in prac tice, we are also abl e (and likely) to antici‐
pate the emotions w e expect to expe rience in the fut ure. Indeed,
research shows t hat when faced with an et hical dilemma, consu mers
tend to think abou t the subsequent ef fects of their act ions and make
the choice that ant icipates the mos t pleasurabl e emotions (Mell ers
& Mcgraw, 2001). Anti cipated emotions h ave been found to infl u‐
ence desires in goa l‐directed behaviour s (Perugini & Bagozzi, 2001),
consumer ethic al intentions (Steenhaut & Kenhove, 2 006), and pro‐
environmental behaviours (Onwezen, Antonides, & Bartels, 2013).
Yet, despite the wide ly accepted releva nce of anticipated e mo‐
tions for under standing in dividual decisi on making, the m anner in
which this influ ence operates and the ro le anticipated emotion s take
on at each stage of t he consumer ethic al decision mak ing process,
are still relati vely underst udied. How and in w hat measure do our
expected em otions affect our abi lity to make ethical or un ethical de‐
cisions? And given tha t these anticipated emotions have a n impact,
which ones play th e biggest role?
The current res earch has two main objectives : first, to measure
the influence of b oth positive and ne gative anticipat ed emotions
at each stage of cons umer ethical d ecision making p rocess: ethica l
awareness, ethical judgement, ethical intention, and ethical be‐
haviour; and se cond, to describ e the specific p ositive and nega tive
anticipated emo tions that most af fect each stage of consumer et h‐
ical deliber ation process an d assess their re lative impact o n those
outcomes.
Understa nding the role of ant icipated emotio ns, both positiv e
and negative, on co nsumer ethic al decision makin g is fundament al,
for both theor y and pract ice. Better und erstandin g the processes
underlying et hical consume r decisions is not on ly a contribu‐
tion in itself, but i mportant ly, can also allow us to bet ter identif y
the predicto rs of consumer ethi cs, by providing a m ore thorough
understanding of how individuals resolve ethical dilemmas in con‐
sumption contex ts. Furthermore, f ocusing on the role of anticip ated
emotions in decis ion making involving ethics a lso allows us to move
beyond the trad itional valen ce‐based approa ch to ethical de cision
making, to addr ess the individ ual emotional me chanisms throu gh
which affec t can influence t he ethical deli beration proc ess. Finally,
the results of t he current stud y can also be an imp ortant aid , to i)
distinguish th e nature of diffe rent types of dis crete emotions; a nd,
ii) elucidate the im pact that the se diverse discr ete emotions have
on decisions involv ing ethical iss ues, allowing us to i dentify whic h
discrete emotio ns act as the main somatic marker s (Damasio, 2006)
to support info rmation processing an d encourage or discourag e eth‐
ically favourable consumer decisions.
From a practic al point of view, by providi ng a comprehensi ve
investigation of the relationship between anticipated emotions
and consumer dec ision making in et hical situatio ns, this resear ch
allows the most in fluent facto rs underlyin g consumer choice s
involving ethics to be identified; improves predictive capability
regarding individuals' ethical or unethical actions; and can serve
to help increase t he effecti veness of marketin g efforts a imed at
discouraging the unethical consumer conduct and/or encouraging
the ethical con sumers behavio ur, through communic ation strat‐
egies or physica l environment s able to promote soc ially respon‐
sible behaviour s. In addition , as companies are f acing increasi ng
legal and socia l pressure towards t he ethical and socially respo n‐
sible decisions a nd behaviours, much of it from consu mers them‐
selves, it is impo rtant to also h ave a thorough unde rstanding of
what drives ethi cally favourable consume r behaviours and how to
promote them is im perative, to ensu re ethical ac tions from both
sides—the seller an d the buyer; and t hat consumers wi ll reward
firms for their ethical choices.
The remainder of t his paper is org anized as follows. S ection
two present an ove rview of the rele vant literature r egarding ethi‐
cal decision ma king and anticip ated emotions. Se ction three p res‐
ents our hypoth eses, followed by a descrip tion of the methods used
(Section 4). Key resu lts are then presente d (Section 5) and discusse d
(Section 6); and t he final sect ions conclude th e paper, and present
limitations an d avenues for further re search.
2 | LITERATURE RE VIEW
2.1 | Ethical d ecision making and emotions
From the 1960s onwards, s everal contributions eme rged in the mar‐
keting literature aiming to describe the ethical decision making pro‐
cess. Based on th e assumption tha t ethical behav iour is a primaril y
cognitive proces s (Trevino, Weaver, & Reynolds, 2006), t hese contri‐
butions emphasized the large number of variables—environmental,
situational, individual, organizational, and ethical (Ferrell & Gresham,
1985;Hunt &Vite ll,1986; Jones, 1991;Trevino, 1986)—which can
influence the ethical decision making process.
One of the most wid ely cited models of ethical de cision making
emerging from t his early resea rch is Rest's (1986) four comp onent
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