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Journal of Business Ethics
Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics 2/2020

05.07.2018 | Original Paper

The Double-Edged Sword of Ethical Nudges: Does Inducing Hypocrisy Help or Hinder the Adoption of Pro-environmental Behaviors?

verfasst von: Karoline Gamma, Robert Mai, Moritz Loock

Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics | Ausgabe 2/2020

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Abstract

To promote ethical and pro-environmental behavior, hypocrisy sometimes is made salient to individuals: i.e., they are made aware that their past behavior does not conform to expressed norms. The fact that this strategy may backfire and may even reduce the likelihood of individuals performing the desired action has been largely overlooked. This paper develops a theory of how hypocrisy stimulates two opposing heuristic processes: one that favors the former, positive outcome (the eco-citizenship effect) and one that renders hypocrisy non-effective (resistance-to-habit-change effect). We test the model and reveal important boundary conditions using the finding of a comprehensive field experiment (1377 consumers). Situational (public vs. private advocacy) and individual factors (low vs. high construal levels) determine which of the competing mechanisms is activated. The paper contributes a novel understanding to managers and scholars of how hypocrisy operates and illuminates the contingencies of when this strategy is beneficial.
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Nächster Artikel Sustainability Centres and Fit: How Centres Work to Integrate Sustainability Within Business Schools

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Fußnoten
1
Another form of hypocrisy is when individuals judge the immoral behavior of others more severely than their own immoral behavior, which is called having double standards (Valdesolo and DeSteno 2008, 2007). In this paper, we focus on the first form of hypocrisy, namely failing to act in a way consistent with one’s own previous statements.
 
2
Customers could either win a weekend getaway in the region in which the energy provider operates, one of the two hotel vouchers for a one-night stay, or one of the three gift baskets including local products.
 
3
It was indeed planned that some of the collected statements would later be published together with a project report on the website, or integrated into the annual report of the institute.
 
4
There was an increase in new registrations for the energy efficiency online app of the energy provider during the time data were collected. However, it was not possible to trace to which experimental group people who registered at the portal belonged due to technological constraints and data privacy issues.
 
5
In addition to this binary measure of adoption intention, we also asked participants to indicate their intention to subscribe to the app using three items (7-point Likert scales) adapted from White and Peloza (2009). This measure was used to control if participants declined because they did not want to subscribe to the app immediately.
 
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Metadaten
Titel
The Double-Edged Sword of Ethical Nudges: Does Inducing Hypocrisy Help or Hinder the Adoption of Pro-environmental Behaviors?
verfasst von
Karoline Gamma
Robert Mai
Moritz Loock
Publikationsdatum
05.07.2018
Verlag
Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in
Journal of Business Ethics / Ausgabe 2/2020
Print ISSN: 0167-4544
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0697
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-3930-2

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