Results

Dear backers,

it has been far too long since I last reported on my project. Sorry for that!

In this lab note I will finally present the results of my research project you supported so generously.

The main result is that contrary to my main hypothesis collective consumer decisions do not entail more ethical production processes. This is because consumers do not make use of their increased market power provided by collective decisions.

For further explanation let me first give you a short recap about the experimental design (for details look here) and explain how consumer decisions were designed in my experiment. Participants played in groups of four. The groups always comprised of two producers and two consumers. I conducted different versions of the experiment the comparison of which allowed to test my hypothesis.

In the individual decision version of the experiment buying decisions of consumers determined which product they wanted to buy just for themselves. In the collective decision version consumers made a suggestion about which product to buy for themselves and for the other consumer in their group. One of the two consumer suggestions was selected randomly and put into practice. So if consumers had a say at all they wielded full purchase power of the group. This is an increase of potential market power. 

Why did consumers not make use of this increased market power? You might think that they just did not care about the negative external effect of production (decreasing a donation to Doctors without Borders). This is clearly not the case. If consumers had the choice between two products that differed such that the more expensive one was also produced more ethically, almost one half of consumers decided to buy the more expensive product.

It might be that consumers in the individual decision version buy products that are produced just in line with their ethical values. While this could be the case theoretically it would be in sharp contrast to all we know about discrepancies between consumers’ values and their actual buying behaviour.

Given the fact that consumer boycotts work well to influence product demand, it is also unlikely that collective consumer action in general does not influence consumers’ individual purchase behaviour.

After consumers made their buying decision/suggestion they were asked to state their believes about the other consumer’s decision/suggestion. I expected, that in the collective decision version consumers would act more independently from their expectations of the other consumer’s behaviour. Interestingly, the data reveals that the opposite is the case. When consumers decide for themselves and the other consumer, they care more about their believes about the consumers behaviour. They seem to be reluctant to impose their own ethical assessment onto others. 

Why does this effect prevail over the effect I expected collective consumer decisions to have. This might have to do with malleability of the perception of what actually is ethical and what is unethical. In contrast to consumer boycotts, in my experiment consumers are not offered a clear classification of unethical and ethical production. Therefore, when acting according to the own initial perception of what would be an ethical buying decision includes foregoing some money consumers think twice and adapt their perception rather then imposing their own initial assessment onto others. To investigate this further is a topic for future research. 

The main practical implication of my results is that normative judgements about what it means to consume ethically is an important tool to promote ethical consumerism.

If you are interested in more details (graphs, regression tables, …) you are very welcome to have a look into my master thesis.