IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/osfxxx/4dczh.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of New Products on Ethical Beliefs

Author

Listed:
  • Vivalt, Eva
  • Macdonald, Bobbie

Abstract

We test whether the availability of consumer goods affects ethical beliefs. Several new firms are developing "clean" animal products: lab-grown meat, egg, and dairy products that do not rely on traditional animal agriculture. Standard models of cognitive dissonance would predict that the mere availability of such a product would lead consumers to put more moral weight on the environment and farm animals. We do not initially observe this and in fact find that information about clean meat may even negatively affect beliefs. A second experiment in which we use priming to randomly manipulate how positively respondents view the product explains the surprising result: due to concerns about the "unnaturalness" of the product, many do not find it an acceptable substitute, however, those who perceive the product positively do change their ethical beliefs.

Suggested Citation

  • Vivalt, Eva & Macdonald, Bobbie, 2017. "The Impact of New Products on Ethical Beliefs," OSF Preprints 4dczh, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:4dczh
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/4dczh
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/5a039c259ad5a102677959f5/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/4dczh?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rabin, Mathew, 1991. "Cognitive Dissonance and Social Change," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt37b169jt, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    2. Rabin, Matthew, 1994. "Cognitive dissonance and social change," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 177-194, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Qiyan ONG & Yohanes Eko RIYANTO & Walter E. THESEIRA & Steven M. SHEFFRIN, 2013. "The Self-Image Signaling Roles of Voice in Decision-Making," Economic Growth Centre Working Paper Series 1303, Nanyang Technological University, School of Social Sciences, Economic Growth Centre.
    2. Ernesto Dal Bó & Marko Terviö, 2013. "Self-Esteem, Moral Capital, And Wrongdoing," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 599-663, June.
    3. Nyborg, Karine, 2011. "I don't want to hear about it: Rational ignorance among duty-oriented consumers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 79(3), pages 263-274, August.
    4. Jost, John T. & Pelham, Brett W. & Sullivan, Bilian Ni & Sheldon, Oliver, 2001. "Social Inequality and the Reduction of Ideological Dissonance on Behalf of the System: Evidence of Enhanced System Justification among the Disadvantaged," Research Papers 1671, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    5. Mitesh Kataria & Tobias Regner, 2015. "Honestly, why are you donating money to charity? An experimental study about self-awareness in status-seeking behavior," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 79(3), pages 493-515, November.
    6. Mauleon, Ana & Nanumyan, Mariam & Vannetelbosch, Vincent, 2024. "Ideal efforts and consensus in a multi-layer network game," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2024023, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    7. Lamprinakis, Lampros & Fulton, Murray E., 2006. "Cognitive Dissonance and Customer Allegiance in a Mixed Oligopoly," 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA 21228, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    8. Erik O. Kimbrough & Vernon L. Smith & Bart J. Wilson, 2008. "Historical Property Rights, Sociality, and the Emergence of Impersonal Exchange in Long-Distance Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 1009-1039, June.
    9. Nguyen, Trang & de Brauw, Alan & van den Berg, Marrit, 2022. "Sweet or not: Using information and cognitive dissonance to nudge children toward healthier food choices," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).
    10. Denis Tverskoi & Andrea Guido & Giulia Andrighetto & Angel Sánchez & Sergey Gavrilets, 2023. "Disentangling material, social, and cognitive determinants of human behavior and beliefs," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-13, December.
    11. Meng, Delong & Wang, Siyu, 2024. "Impact of open-mindedness on information avoidance: Tailored vs. generic communication," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    12. Evans, R., Reiche, S. & Reiche, S., 2022. "When is a Contrarian Adviser Optimal?," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2222, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    13. Macera, Rosario, 2014. "Dynamic beliefs," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 1-18.
    14. Arifovic, Jasmina & Eaton, B. Curtis & Walker, Graeme, 2015. "The coevolution of beliefs and networks," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 46-63.
    15. Stark, Oded & Fan, C. Simon, 2010. "Migration for degrading work as an escape from humiliation," MPRA Paper 28905, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Cristina Bicchieri & Eugen Dimant, 2018. "It's Not A Lie If You Believe It. Lying and Belief Distortion Under Norm-Uncertainty," PPE Working Papers 0012, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    17. Gosnell, Greer K., 2018. "Communicating Resourcefully: A Natural Field Experiment on Environmental Framing and Cognitive Dissonance in Going Paperless," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 128-144.
    18. Ahrens, Steffen & Bosch-Rosa, Ciril, 2023. "Motivated beliefs, social preferences, and limited liability in financial decision-Making," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    19. Sautua, Santiago I., 2022. "Donation requests following a pay rise," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    20. Chen, Si, 2012. "Optimistic versus Pessimistic--Optimal Judgemental Bias with Reference Point," MPRA Paper 50693, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:4dczh. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://osf.io/preprints/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.