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Anger Strays, Fear Refrains: The Differential Effect of Negative Emotions on Consumers’ Ethical Judgments

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Jatinder Jit Singh at EADA Business School
Jatinder Jit Singh
Nitika Garg at UNSW Sydney
Nitika Garg
Rahul Govind
Rahul Govind
Rahul Govind
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Scott J. Vitell at University of Mississippi
Scott J. Vitell
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Abstract and Figures

Although various factors have been studied for their influence on consumers’ ethical judgments, the role of incidental emotions has received relatively less attention. Recent research in consumer behavior has focused on studying the effect of specific incidental emotions on various aspects of consumer decision making. This paper investigates the effect of two negative, incidental emotional states of anger and fear on ethical judgment in a consumer context using a passive unethical behavior scenario (i.e., too much change received). The paper presents two experimental studies. Study 1 focuses on the interaction of moral intensity (amount of change) and incidental emotion state in predicting the ethical judgment while study 2 investigates the underlying causal mechanism behind the process, using a mediation analysis. The results reveal a significant interaction between moral intensity and incidental emotion. Specifically, individuals in the state of incidental fear exhibit higher levels of ethical judgment as the moral intensity increases as compared to individuals in the state of incidental anger. Further, perceived control is found to mediate the relationship between emotional state and ethical judgment under higher moral intensity condition.
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Anger Strays, Fear Refrains: The Differential Effect of Negative
Emotions on Consumers’ Ethical Judgments
Jatinder J. Singh
1
•Nitika Garg
2
•Rahul Govind
2
•Scott J. Vitell
3
Received: 5 December 2015 / Accepted: 21 June 2016 / Published online: 2 July 2016
Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016
Abstract Although various factors have been studied for
their influence on consumers’ ethical judgments, the role of
incidental emotions has received relatively less attention.
Recent research in consumer behavior has focused on
studying the effect of specific incidental emotions on var-
ious aspects of consumer decision making. This paper
investigates the effect of two negative, incidental emo-
tional states of anger and fear on ethical judgment in a
consumer context using a passive unethical behavior sce-
nario (i.e., too much change received). The paper presents
two experimental studies. Study 1 focuses on the interac-
tion of moral intensity (amount of change) and incidental
emotion state in predicting the ethical judgment while
study 2 investigates the underlying causal mechanism
behind the process, using a mediation analysis. The results
reveal a significant interaction between moral intensity and
incidental emotion. Specifically, individuals in the state of
incidental fear exhibit higher levels of ethical judgment as
the moral intensity increases as compared to individuals in
the state of incidental anger. Further, perceived control is
found to mediate the relationship between emotional state
and ethical judgment under higher moral intensity
condition.
Keywords Ethical judgment Incidental emotion Anger
Fear Mediation analysis
Abbreviation
CES Consumer ethics scale
Introduction
Consumers do not always behave within the bounds of
acceptable norms of conduct and exhibit behaviors that are
not compliant with moral/ethical standards (Fullerton and
Punj 2004). Some examples of consumer misbehavior are
accepting too much change when given in error, shoplift-
ing, using and then returning a product, changing price
tags, using expired coupons, credit card fraud, purchasing
counterfeit products, and illegitimate sharing/copying
copyrighted products. In a service context, such behaviors
could have a direct negative impact on the company toward
which the behavior is directed as well as an indirect neg-
ative effect on other customers’ experience and a conta-
gious effect on the behavior of other customers (Schaefers
et al. 2016). Because of detection and measurement diffi-
culties, the financial impact and prevalence of only some of
these practices have been reported. For example, retailers
lose billions of dollars every year to shoplifting (Fullerton
and Punj 1997; Wilkes 1978); $44 billion in 2014 (National
Retail Foundation 2015); with one in eleven people
admitting to shoplifting at some point (Shoplifting Statis-
tics 2015). Overall, the cost of consumer unethical
behavior is huge to the economy, as evinced by a report
&Scott J. Vitell
svitell@bus.olemiss.edu
Jatinder J. Singh
jsingh@eada.edu
Nitika Garg
n.garg@unsw.edu.au
Rahul Govind
r.govind@unsw.edu.au
1
EADA Business School, Arago 204, 08011 Barcelona, Spain
2
UNSW Australia Business School, University of New South
Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia
3
School of Business, University of Mississippi, Oxford,
MS 38677, USA
123
J Bus Ethics (2018) 151:235–248
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-016-3248-x
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
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