(How and why) do consumers adjust their ethical consumption practices in times of inflation?

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Katja H. Brunk
• Subject Area: Management and Marketing
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 541387056

Ethical consumption is crucial for the future of our planet and human welfare. Ethical consumers link their ethical concerns (e.g., environmental protection, human rights, animal welfare) with their shopping behaviour, oftentimes willing to pay a price premium to act in accordance with their moral values. While these consumers have always had to make sacrifices by absorbing increased costs for their ethical choices, the currently experienced inflation, i.e., the rise of overall price level, adds additional burden. This research project empirically investigates the impact the current inflation environment, and the resulting decrease in disposable incomes, has on existing ethical consumers and their consumption practices and habits. The planned project will follow a sequential, fully-integrated mixed methods design, which encompasses three empirical phases: Phase 1 will be an inductive interview study with the objective of deep exploration and sense-making of the phenomenon of ethical consumption in times of inflation. This is necessary since we are experiencing a macro-economic climate that is incomparable to conditions under which existing research into the price-ethical consumption dynamic has been conducted so far. The study intends to capture the full range of consumers' behavioural, psychological, and attitudinal responses to this new crisis situation and explores potential underlying moderating and mediating mechanisms to be tested during the consecutive empirical phases. Building the inductive phase, phase 2 will consist of a discrete choice experiment with the objective of exploring consumers' potential product attribute prioritisation and trade-off effects in times of financial constraint. Finally, phase 3 will draw on findings from phases 1 and 2 and include factorial experiments with the objective to study boundary conditions, as well as potential moderators and mediators of the effect of increasing price levels on ethical consumption behaviour. This planned project yields a range of implications. Firstly, the consequences of an inflation environment on ethical consumption have not been studied before, thus the project will offer important scientific contributions in the fields of consumer behaviour and macromarketing. Our studies will furthermore provide implications for marketers, retailers and consumers and hope to suggest ways for policy-makers to support and foster ethical consumption, even in challenging macro-economic times.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants