Unbundling Ethical Consumer Choice: A Configurational Analysis With a Framing Experiment
通过715名参与者的模糊集定性比较分析和随机实验，研究动物福利情境下促进或阻碍伦理选择的因素组合，发现损失框架比收益框架更易促成伦理选择，但框架效应在某些情境下不显著。
To understand ethical consumer choice, it should be studied from a holistic, configurational perspective. We use fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) ( N = 715) with a randomized experiment in the context of animal welfare to examine (a) the interdependencies of factors aiding or impeding ethical choice, and (b) whether ethical choices occur differently in a loss frame than in a gain frame. We identify several alternative pathways to ethical choice and non-choice, and within these pathways, we reveal substitution effects, complementarities, and contingencies, reflecting the complexities of consumer choice. Furthermore, we demonstrate how ethical choice results more easily in a loss frame, and non-choice more easily in a gain frame, but how framing can also be irrelevant in certain situations. We contribute theoretically to ethical consumer choice in general and to food choice in particular by showing how it is the interplay of several factors in complex configurations that determines whether the situation favors ethical choice or non-choice. We outline important management and policy implications of our findings.