A little good is good enough: Ethical consumption, cheap excuses, and moral self-licensing

Jannis Engel and Nora Szech

No 102, Working Paper Series in Economics from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management

Abstract: This paper explores the role of cheap excuses in product choice. If a product improves upon one ethically relevant dimension, agents may care less about other independent ethical facets of the product. Opting for a product that fulfills one ethical aspect may thus suffice for keeping a high moral self-image in agents, and render it easier to ignore other ethically relevant aspects they would otherwise care about. The use of such cheap excuses could thus lead to a 'static moral self-licensing' effect. This would extend the logic of the well-known moral self-licensing over time. Our experimental study provides empirical evidence that the static counterpart of moral self-licensing exists. Furthermore, effects spill over to unrelated, ethically relevant contexts later in time. Thus, static moral self-licensing and moral self-licensing over time can amplify each other. Outsiders, though monetarily incentivized for correct estimates, are completely oblivious to the effects of moral selflicensing, both, static and over time.

Keywords: moral self-licensing; moral spillovers; cheap excuses; outsider beliefs; moral personality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D03 D84 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/157282/1/883814277.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: A little good is good enough: Ethical consumption, cheap excuses, and moral self-licensing (2020)
Working Paper: A Little Good is Good Enough: Ethical Consumption, Cheap Excuses, and Moral Self-Licensing (2017)
Working Paper: A Little Good is Good Enough: Ethical Consumption, Cheap Excuses, and Moral Self-Licensing (2017)
Working Paper: A little good is good enough: Ethical consumption, cheap excuses, and moral self-licensing (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:kitwps:102

DOI: 10.5445/IR/1000068513

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series in Economics from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().