Taken collectively, consumer food choices have a major impact on animal lives, human lives, and the environment. But it is far from clear how to move from facts about the power of collective consumer demand to conclusions about what one ought to do as an individual consumer. In particular, even if a large-scale shift in demand away from a certain product (e.g., factory-farmed meat) would prevent grave harms or injustices, it typically does not seem that it will (...) make a difference whether one refrains from purchasing that product oneself. Most present-day food companies operate at too large a scale for a single purchase to make a difference to production decisions. If that is true, then it is not clear what point there is in refraining. This is “the problem of collective impact.” This chapter explores a range of proposals for how to solve this problem. (shrink)

This article investigates the scope and effects of enhanced consumer choice in health insurance that is presented as a cornerstone of the new health insurance legislation in the Netherlands that will come into effect in 2006. The choice for choice marks the current libertarian trend in Dutch health care policymaking. One of our conclusions is that the scope of enhanced choice should not be overstated due to many legal and non-legal restrictions to it. The (...) class='Hi'>consumer choice advocates have great expectations of the impact of enhanced choice. A critical analysis of its impact demonstrates that these expectations may not become true and that enhanced consumer choice should not be perceived as the ‘magic bullet’ for many problems in health care. (shrink)

The increasing popularity of local food consumption can be attributed to the heightened awareness of food safety concerns, carbon emissions produced from food transportation, and an understanding of how large corporations’ obtain their food supplies. Although there is increasing discussion on both the local and organic food movement independently, there is not a wide availability of literature examining the motivations and perceptions of consumers with regard to farmers’ markets. Issues such as perceptions about what type of food consumers are purchasing (...) at markets, nor the main motivations for frequenting such establishments are discussed. Therefore the purpose of this study was to determine consumer motivations, benefits, and perceptions of farmers’ markets. Using the case study location of Toronto, Canada, this study surveyed 300 participants during the fall of 2011. Findings indicated that the main purpose for visiting famers’ markets is not solely to fulfill grocery needs. Quality of products offered and the ability to support the local community were the primary motivators to visit the markets. (shrink)

Ethical consumerism -- Caveat emptor -- The consumer as causal agent -- The consumer as complicit participant -- Toward a practical consumer ethic.

We present a rational model of consumer choice, which can also serve as a behavioral model. The central construct is λ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\lambda $$\end{document}, the marginal utility of money, derived from the consumer’s rest-of-life problem. It provides a simple criterion for choosing a consumption bundle in a separable consumption problem. We derive a robust approximation of λ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\lambda $$\end{document} and show how to (...) incorporate liquidity constraints, indivisibilities, and adaptation to a changing environment. We find connections with numerous historical and recent constructs, both behavioral and neoclassical, and draw contrasts with standard partial equilibrium analysis. The result is a better grounded, more flexible, and more intuitive description of consumer choice. (shrink)

We consider a case where consumers are faced with a choice between sweatshop-produced clothing and identical clothing produced in high-income countries. We argue that it is morally better for consumers to purchase clothing produced in sweatshops and then to compensate sweatshop workers for the difference between their actual wage and a fair wage than it is for them either to purchase the sweatshop clothing without this compensatory transfer or to purchase clothing produced in high-income countries.

The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of consumers’ choice deferral behavior on their intertemporal choice preference. The empirical study shows that consumers’ choice deferral behavior can significantly affect their intertemporal decision preference through the level of hopefulness. Compared with non-choice deferral behavior, choice deferral behavior can improve the level of consumers’ sense of hopefulness, which then makes them prefer larger-longer interests in intertemporal decision-making. The effect of consumers’ sense of hopefulness on (...) their intertemporal choice preference is moderated by their perceived information integrity. When the perceived information integrity is low, the effect of hopefulness on intertemporal decision preference will be enhanced, but when the perceived information integrity is high, the effect of hopefulness on intertemporal decision preference will not be affected. In addition, the theoretical and practical significance of this study and the prospect of future research are also discussed. (shrink)

Neuromarketing relies on Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology to gain insight into how customers react to marketing stimuli. Marketers spend about$750 billion annually on traditional marketing camping. They use traditional marketing research procedures such as Personal Depth Interviews, Surveys, Focused Group Discussions, and so on, which are frequently criticized for failing to extract true consumer preferences. On the other hand, Neuromarketing promises to overcome such constraints. This work proposes a machine learning framework for predicting consumers' purchase intention (PI) and (...) affective attitude (AA) from analyzing EEG signals. In this work, EEG signals are collected from 20 healthy participants while administering three advertising stimuli settings: product, endorsement, and promotion. After preprocessing, features are extracted in three domains (time, frequency, and time-frequency). Then, after selecting features using wrapper-based methods Recursive Feature Elimination, Support Vector Machine is used for categorizing positive and negative (AA and PI). The experimental results show that proposed framework achieves an accuracy of 84 and 87.00% for PI and AA ensuring the simulation of real-life results. In addition, AA and PI signals show N200 and N400 components when people tend to take decision after visualizing static advertisement. Moreover, negative AA signals shows more dispersion than positive AA signals. Furthermore, this work paves the way for implementing such a neuromarketing framework using consumer-grade EEG devices in a real-life setting. Therefore, it is evident that BCI-based neuromarketing technology can help brands and businesses effectively predict future consumer preferences. Hence, EEG-based neuromarketing technologies can assist brands and enterprizes in accurately forecasting future consumer preferences. (shrink)

To better understand the purchasing decision-making process of humane pork, and examine the internal relationship between consumers’ preferences in rational consumption and irrational decoy scenarios, 405 consumers in Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province, and China were surveyed. Attributes were set for breeding time, breeding mode, diet cleanliness label, and price, and the first three among them reflect animal welfare conditions. The results show that in the rational consumption scenarios, consumers pay the most attention to the price attribute, followed by the attribute (...) of diet cleanliness label, breeding mode, and breeding time. In the irrational decoy scenarios, consumers are most likely to be affected by the attribute decoy of diet cleanliness label, which have the utility of avoiding food safety risks. In addition, the decoy effect triggered by the price attribute which owned the highest degree of rational preference among consumers is also substantially higher, but lower than that of the diet cleanliness label attribute. The decoy effect caused by the breeding time attribute with the lowest degree of consumers’ rational preference is also the lowest. Therefore, the government should strengthen the publicity of the humane treatment of pigs before slaughter, and improve the certification and management system of pigs’ diet cleanliness. Besides, marketers are suggested to emphasis the product attributes that customer’s value the most in their advertising. (shrink)

It is frequently argued that home birth is morally irresponsible because it involves the taking of risks on behalf of the fetus. Against this position, I argue three things. First, the fact that home birth involves risks does not necessarily entail that choosing or attending one is morally unacceptable, irresponsible or wrong. Second, parents have a prima facia prerogative to decide on behalf of their fetuses and children whether risks should be taken. While this prima facia prerogative can be overridden, (...) reasonable and widely accepted criteria for doing so are not met in the case of home birth. Third, since the current attitudes and behaviours of physicians with regard to home birth constitute a de facto morally and socially unjustifiable overriding of an informed parental decision, physician autonomy should be restricted so as to preserve the autonomy of the medical consumer. (shrink)

Firms that wish to be morally responsible in providing products that meet a high standard of safety may face problems competing against firms that make unsafe products and sell these products at cheap prices; these problems may be compounded when consumers do not accurately process information about safety and risk. This paper presents a conceptual argument that the tort system may serve to promulgate information which makes it feasible for firms to market safe products even in the face of these (...) competitive obstacles.To corroborate the conceptual argument, the paper presents the results of an experimental study about the impact of negligence liability information on consumer product safety evaluation. The results show that provision of negligence information heightens consumer concern for safety and firms' ethical behavior, and increases the proportion of consumer choices in favors of the brands sold by manufacturers with a favorable track record for quality. More importantly, they indicate that provision of negligence information reduces the likelihood that brands which conform to inferior safety standards will be chosen by consumers who care about safety standards. (shrink)

Fulfilling consumer expectations of corporate social responsibility can bring strategic advantage to firms. However, research on the topic is fragmented across disparate disciplines, and a comprehensive framework to connect CSR supply and demand is missing. As a result, firms often supply CSR that does not attract demand, as signified by pessimism about ethical consumerism in recent years and the inconclusive link between corporate financial and social performance. In this study, we propose a framework of strategic CSR management to define (...) how a company’s supply of CSR could meet consumer demand for ethical products by aligning managerial and consumer perspectives. We then investigate empirically whether such a strategic approach, which integrates potential demand in CSR management, would influence consumer choice of products with CSR components. Our hybrid choice modeling allows the inclusion of psychological biases caused by social desirability and cynicism to increase result validity. The findings support the explanatory power of the framework and reveal that consumers prefer some CSR elements while others adversely affect choices. This study advances the understanding of strategic CSR management and its impact on consumer choice and helps managers include the right mix of CSR characteristics in their products to satisfy ethical consumers. (shrink)

When consumers choose to abstain from purchasing meat, they face some uncertainty about whether their decisions will have an impact on the number of animals raised and killed. Consequentialists have argued that this uncertainty should not dissuade consumers from a vegetarian diet because the “expected” impact, or average impact, will be predictable. Recently, however, critics have argued that the expected marginal impact of a consumer change is likely to be much smaller or more radically unpredictable than previously thought. This (...) objection to the consequentialist case for vegetarianism is known as the “causal inefficacy” (or “causal impotence”) objection. In this paper, we argue that the inefficacy objection fails. First, we summarize the contours of the objection and the standard “expected impact” response to it. Second, we examine and rebut two contemporary attempts (by Mark Budolfson and Ted Warfield) to defeat the expected impact reply through alleged demonstrations of the inefficacy of abstaining from meat consumption. Third, we argue that there are good reasons to believe that single individual consumers—not just consumers in aggregate—really do make a positive difference when they choose to abstain from meat consumption. Our case rests on three economic observations: (i) animal producers operate in a highly competitive environment, (ii) complex supply chains efficiently communicate some information about product demand, and (iii) consumers of plant-based meat alternatives have positive consumption spillover effects on other consumers. (shrink)

When consumers choose to abstain from purchasing meat, they face some uncertainty about whether their decisions will have an impact on the number of animals raised and killed. Consequentialists have argued that this uncertainty should not dissuade consumers from a vegetarian diet because the “expected” impact, or average impact, will be predictable. Recently, however, critics have argued that the expected marginal impact of a consumer change is likely to be much smaller or more radically unpredictable than previously thought. This (...) objection to the consequentialist case for vegetarianism is known as the “causal inefficacy” (or “causal impotence”) objection. In this paper, we argue that the inefficacy objection fails. First, we summarize the contours of the objection and the standard “expected impact” response to it. Second, we examine and rebut two contemporary attempts (by Mark Budolfson and Ted Warfield) to defeat the expected impact reply through alleged demonstrations of the inefficacy of abstaining from meat consumption. Third, we argue that there are good reasons to believe that single individual consumers—not just individual consumers taken as an aggregate—really do make a positive difference when they choose to abstain from meat consumption. Our case rests on three economic observations: (i) animal producers operate in a highly competitive environment, (ii) complex supply chains efficiently communicate some information about product demand, and (iii) consumers of plant-based meat alternatives have positive consumption spillover effects on other consumers. (shrink)

We explore the issue of media content and corporate social responsibility by considering three questions:1. Why is this issue becoming so salient to a variety of stakeholders across the political spectrum at this time?2. What are the ethical issues that companies and policy makers should be concerned about with regard to media content?3. How can media-related companies and industries either better self-regulate or enhance consumer choice to respond to legitimate concerns about access tocontent?

The Ford Pinto’s fuel tank was prone to rupture in collisions above 20 mph, sometimes resulting in burn deaths. An infamous Ford memo estimated the cost of a shield correcting the problem at $11. Should Ford have installed the shield, holding public safety paramount, or, respecting consumer autonomy, have made the shield an option? Answering this question requires distinguishing between three kinds of autonomy: merechoice autonomy (deciding something for oneself, regardless of the content of the choice), proclamative autonomy (...) (making a choice that holds up a value or standard, commitment to which is partly definitive of who one is), and high-impact autonomy (making a choice that profoundly affects one’s ability to make proclamative choices). (This is not a formal distinction, that is, a distinction meant be to be clear, rigorous, and neutral). Autonomy is thus asymmetric: choosing to do x may be highly proclamative while choosing not to do x is not. In the Pinto case, not giving consumers the option of declining the shield undercuts only mere-choice autonomy. Several arguments are provided (including an argument based on the nature of moral agency) that proclamative autonomy (and, derivatively, high-impact autonomy), rather than mere-choice autonomy, has significant positive value. More precisely, it is argued that, as a rule, the more proclamative a choice is, other things being equal, the more weight autonomy claims about that choice possess. The paper concludes that common sense is correct about the Pinto case. In some instances, consumer choice may legitimately count more than the engineer’s commitment to public safety (particularly when proclamative choice is involved). However, losing the opportunity to save $11 is not too large a price to pay in order to counter market pressures against safety by inducing in engineers a professional commitment to put safety first. (shrink)

One major assumption in the climate change debate is that because respondents report positive attitudes to the environment and to low carbon lifestyles they will subsequently engage in environmentally friendly/low carbon behaviors when given the right guidance or information. Many governmental agencies have based their climate change strategy on this basic assumption, despite some anxiety about the value-action gap in psychology more generally. Here we test this assumption. We investigated the relationship between explicit and implicit attitudes to carbon footprint, and (...) both self-reports of environmental behavior and low carbon behavioral choices. We found that self-reported attitudes to carbon footprint were significantly associated only with self-reported environmental and self-reported low-carbon behaviors. They were not significantly associated with the choice of low carbon alternatives in a simulated shopping task. Given that the vast majority of studies on attitudes and behavior in the environmental domain use self-report measures of behavior, this may mean that we are generating research findings that could be making policy makers overly complacent about our readiness for actual behavior change. Implicit attitudes were not significantly associated with either measure in terms of group comparisons, but those with a strong positive implicit attitude towards low carbon did choose more low carbon items, but only under time pressure. The opposite trend was found for explicit attitudes – this increased only when participants were not under time pressure. These results suggest that Kahneman’s hypothesis about contrasting systems of human cognition might be highly relevant to the domain of climate change and behavioral adaptation. (shrink)

It is frequently argued that home birth is morally irresponsible because it involves the taking of risks on behalf of the fetus. Against this position, I argue three things. First, the fact that home birth involves risks does not necessarily entail that choosing or attending one is morally unacceptable, irresponsible or wrong. Second, parents have a prima facia prerogative to decide on behalf of their fetuses and children whether risks should be taken. While this prima facia prerogative can be overridden, (...) reasonable and widely accepted criteria for doing so are not met in the case of home birth. Third, since the current attitudes and behaviours of physicians with regard to home birth constitute a de facto morally and socially unjustifiable overriding of an informed parental decision, physician autonomy should be restricted so as to preserve the autonomy of the medical consumer. (shrink)

Background Policy instruments based on the working of markets have been introduced to empower consumers of healthcare. However, it is still not easy to become a critical consumer of healthcare. Objectives The aim of this study is to analyse the possibilities of the state to strengthen the position of patients with the aid of a new financial regime, such as personal health budgets. Methods Data were collected through in-depth interviews with executives, managers, professionals and client representatives of six long-term (...) care institutions. Results With the introduction of individual budgets the responsibility for budgetary control has shifted from the organisational level to the individual level in the caregiver-client relationship. Having more luxurious care on offer necessitates a stronger demarcation of regular care because organisations cannot simultaneously offer extra care as part of the standard care package. New financial instruments have an impact on the culture of receiving and giving care. Distributive justice takes on new meaning with the introduction of financial market mechanisms in healthcare; the distributing principle of ‘need’ is transformed into the principle of ‘economic demand’. Conclusion Financial instruments not only act as a countervailing power against providers insufficiently client-oriented, but are also used by providers to reinforce their own positions vis-à-vis demanding clients. Tailor-made finance is not the same as tailor-made care. (shrink)

The lack of consistency between people’s engagement in ethical issues and their food choices has received considerable attention. Consumption as “choice” dominates this discourse, understood as decision-making at the point of purchase. But ideas concentrating on individual choice are problematic when trying to understand how social and ethical issues emerge and are dealt with in the practices of buying and eating food. I argue in this paper that “consumer choice” is better understood as a political ideology (...) addressing a particular way in which everyday practices can be directed so as to solve social problems. It is a way that makes questions of power particularly challenging. Some assume consumer sovereignty, emphasizing consumer choice as a reflection of neoliberal deregulation and commercialization. Others worry that ongoing changes increase consumers’ powerlessness. None of these seem to capture that there is active regulation, where public as well as commercial and civil actors are making strong efforts to make people do the right thing—voluntarily. Labeling is the key measure. In practice, the individualized and rationalized model of responsibility depends not only on market opportunities, but even political and social expectations and trust. People may lack concrete capabilities and power to follow up on moral calls, but they may also have a different understanding of who is responsible and what is a “good deed,” or their actions may, in a Foucauldian sense, represent resistance. The paper will, with examples from European empirical studies, discuss how mobilization as well as inertia and disinterest emerge within specific political constellations and practical contexts. (shrink)

Does a pharmacist have a right to refuse to fill certain prescriptions? In this paper, I examine cases in which an employee might refuse to do something that is part of his or her job description. I will argue that in some of these cases, an employee does have a right of refusal and in other cases an employee does not. In those cases where the employee does not have a right of refusal, I argue that the refusals are just (...) cause for termination of employment. I argue that there are moral principles that support the different outcomes in the cases under consideration. I turn to pharmacy cases at the end of the paper and argue that they are analogous to cases where an employee does not have a right of refusal and thus fall under the principle that refusing to fill birth control prescriptions constitutes just cause for termination. (shrink)

The young Marx once remarked that political economy finds itself in an estranged form and is therefore in desperate need of a critical reconstruction of its object [Gegenstand]. He proposed a complete deconstruction of economic objectivity and its categories, hoping to recover the true species-life of man. In the article, we assert that contemporary economic theory remains confined by this estrangement, despite managing to ‘revolutionize’ itself out of the grip of classical political economy. The subjectivist-marginalist reliance on ‘measurable’ consumer (...) preferences not only solidified the discipline’s estrangement, but also wrested away any remaining basic principles of economics through neoclassical reconceptualization. A break with estrangement would require novel critical economic thinking that would do away with the discontinuity between classical and neoclassical economics. It would therefore need a rich enough framework to scrutinize its principal categories. We argue that Alain Badiou’s objective phenomenology possesses a complementary synchronic structure able to conform to basic economic tenets, allowing for a comparative and synthetic approach. This would then be the basis for a new model of economic theorizing. We conclude the article with Marx’s value form, seeing it as a possible central category of a newly proposed economic framework. (shrink)

The intentional stance1 and the contextual stance2 are inextricably interdependent in the production of a comprehensive explanation and means of predicting complex human behaviour. This is illustrated in the context of the expectation of attitudinal-behavioural consistency which has long lain at the heart of both marketing science and social psychology. In practice, cognitively-inclined attitude theory and research leans on the contextual stance in order to formulate the heuristic overlay of mental interpretation in which it primarily presents its predictive and explicative (...) accounts of behaviour. Behaviour analysis has traditionally eschewed this approach, maintaining that it can generate an exclusively extensional account of complex behaviour. It is argued that while the cognitive and behaviour analytic approaches produce equally effective predictions of behaviour, an adequate explanation of human activity requires the addition of the kind of interpretive overlay advocated by Dennett3 in which the relationship between extensional science and intensionalistic interpretation is clarified. The resulting framework of analysis, intentional behaviorism4 provides an inclusive paradigm. (shrink)

The discourse about traceability in food chains focused on traceability as means towards the end of managing health risks. This discourse witnessed a call to broaden traceability to accommodate consumer concerns about foods that are not related to health. This call envisions the development of ethical traceability. This paper presents a justification of ethical traceability. The argument is couched in liberal distinctions, since the call for ethical traceability is based on intuitions about consumer rights to informed choice. (...) The paper suggests that two versions of ethical traceability find justification. The first version of ethical traceability entails that governments ensure that all consumers are provided with foods that respect some threshold level of, e.g., animal welfare that is supported by an overlapping consensus. The second version of ethical traceability entails that food producers provide consumers with products, and sufficient information about these products, that are relevant for reasonable, non-superficial values that are not supported by an overlapping consensus. Governments should facilitate this in the sense that consumers are not provided with misinformation about characteristics of foods that are relevant for reasonable, non-superficial values that are not supported by an overlapping consensus. (shrink)

As health care costs continue to escalate, cost control measures will likely become unavoidable and painful. One approach is to engage external forces to allocate resources - for example, through managed care or outright rationing. Another approach is to engage consumers to make their own allocation decisions, through "self-rationing," wherein they are given greater awareness, control, and hence responsibility for their health care spending. Steadily gaining popularity in this context is the concept of "consumer directed health care" (CDHC), which (...) is envisioned to both control cost and enhance choice, by combining financial incentives with information to help consumers make more informed health care decisions and to appreciate the economic trade-offs of those decisions. While CDHC is gaining attention in the popular press, business publications, and academic journals, it is not without controversy about its relative merits and demerits. CDHC raises questions regarding the ethical limits of consumer responsibility for their choices. While the emphasis on consumer choice implies that autonomy is the ruling ethical principle in CDHC, it must be tempered by justice and beneficence. Justice must temper autonomy to protect disadvantaged populations from further widening disparities in health care access and outcomes that could arise from health care reform efforts. Beneficence must temper autonomy to protect consumers from unintended consequences of uninformed decisions. Thoughtful paternalism suggests that CDHC plans offer choices that are comprehensible to lay consumers, limited in their range of options, and carefully structured with default rules that minimize potential error costs. (shrink)

Does a pharmacist have a right to refuse to fill certain prescriptions? In this paper, I examine cases in which an employee might refuse to do something that is part of his or her job description. I will argue that in some of these cases, an employee does have a right of refusal and in other cases an employee does not. In those cases where the employee does not have a right of refusal, I argue that the refusals (if repeated) (...) are just cause for termination of employment. I argue that there are moral principles that support the different outcomes in the cases under consideration. I turn to pharmacy cases at the end of the paper and argue that they are analogous to cases where an employee does not have a right of refusal and thus fall under the principle that refusing to fill birth control prescriptions constitutes just cause for termination. (shrink)

A set of strategies that argue in favour of reducing carbon emissions by restricting private consumer choices on the grounds of their environmental implications are addressed. A number of ways to criticise and ban environmentally unfriendly consumption on the basis of the liberal harm principle and ideas of over- and mis-consumption are discussed. In the final analysis, doubts remain regarding the normative plausibility and political effectiveness of these strategies.

A major challenge with the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence applications is to manage the long-term societal impacts of this technology. Two central concerns that have emerged in this respect are that the optimized goals behind the data processing of AI applications usually remain opaque and the energy footprint of their data processing is growing quickly. This study thus explores how much people value the transparency and environmental sustainability of AI using the example of personal AI assistants. The results from (...) a choice-based conjoint analysis with a sample of more than 1.000 respondents from Germany indicate that people hardly care about the energy efficiency of AI; and while they do value transparency through explainable AI, this added value of an application is offset by minor costs. The findings shed light on what kinds of AI people are likely to demand and have important implications for policy and regulation. (shrink)

This paper presents empirical data which allow us to examine how ethical aspects influence ethical consumers’ brand choices on technology-based products,such as washing machines, fridge freezers, and cars. Predicted by the literature review, the majority of our interviewees did make their brand choice based onreliability. However, we found that ethical consumers’ concept of reliability includes not only functionality but also ethical values. The results suggest that we have to reconsider whether considerations of companies’ ethical standards are the only indicators (...) of brand choice as a shortcut of the assessment of business ethics or whether various forms of ethical considerations including ethically reconstructed reliability can also a contribute to this. (shrink)