My overarching area of research centers around how consumer movements can reshape the future of markets and consumption from the bottom up. E.g., consumer sensitivity to moral and ethical considerations may shape the way brands communicate about crises; the movement towards "eating local" changes the nature of food marketing by hegemonic brands that are by definition not local; anti-consumerism and ideals of consuming less may lead to new types of "demarketing;" etc.
Below I present example projects representing each line of research. A complete list of my published and ongoing projects can be found under the "CV" tab above.
CONSUMER MOVEMENTS AND DISRUPTIVE CONSUMPTION
Although many consumers were recently outraged at United Airlines for assaulting a passenger who would not give up his seat on an overbooked flight, a number of articles popped up attempting to smear the victim's character and imply that he is somehow blameworthy for the incident because of his prior moral failings (see, for instance, this article explaining why the victim is "not as innocent as he seems").
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This project examines this phenomenon through a series of experiments, showing that victims perceived as immoral are seen as deserving of suffering in general, leading observers to exaggerate the blame they receive in unrelated product-failure situations. Both the victim's morality and general likeability are examined as factors, and results show that morality and deservingness judgments predominate in steering blame assessments, over and above other factors related to blame (e.g., perceived negligence, victim likeability, etc.). The experiments further show that this process has a disruptive effect on ordinary free-market functioning: when consumers blame the victim they are less likely to take punitive actions against the offending company.
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RUnder second-round review at Journal of Consumer Psychology
Blaming Victims of Product Failure (Dissertation)
A Tripartite View of Locavorism
Consumer Moral Judgments following Unintentional Corporate Harm
Natural disasters are devastating, but the harm they induce may be amplified when large-scale corporations fail to take preventative actions to mitigate this harm. For instance, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) was warned in 2008 that an earthquake was imminent that would produce a tsunami, potentially inundating the power plant and leading to nuclear meltdown. However, officials at TEPCO decided against taking preventative action due to a belief that the risk of meltdown was low. Four years later, that exact event occurred, causing the meltdown of three reactors and widespread radioactive harm to the surrounding area.
Companies in such positions are faced with a moral dilemma: either take action to mitigate a low-probability but highly consequential harm or take no action as a strategic (but risky) cost-saving tactic. Taking action may represent a waste of resources and generate no moral credit for the company if the harm fails to occur. Conversely, should the harm occur, a failure to take preventive action may produce moral condemnation. This project considers the latter scenario, proposing and testing a model of consumers' psychological process in response to news of such an event. Findings show that key considerations affecting moral judgments are the degree of risk taken by the company and the extent to which preventative action would have mitigated the harm. Negligence perceptions are shown to be the central variable linking these considerations to downstream moral responses (e.g., moral anger, moral reasoning, desire for punishment and restitution, etc.).
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Under second-round review at Journal of Consumer Psychology
For much of human history, consuming locally produced food was the status quo. Agricultural industrialization and its decoupling effects, especially since the 1930s, have complicated consumer-food relationships and distanced producers from consumer. A number of undesirable, unintended consequences of this separation have been tied to this development, including environmental degradation, increased incidence of food-borne illness, economic turmoil in smaller food communities, and diminished food quality. The "Locavore" movement represents a response to this trend.
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This research conceptualizes Locavorism as a stable consumer identity and offers a comprehensive but parsimonious model for conceptualizing it consisting of three core dimensions: Lionization of local foods, Opposition to long-distance food systems, and support for Communalization of food economies (i.e., the L-O-C framework). In addition, the project builds a Locavore scale drawing on a variety of consumer samples, and validates the scale through a series of surveys, experiments, and quasi-experiments.
​Revising for invited resubmission at Journal of Consumer Research
Green Demarketing in Advertisements
Marketing is conventionally considered a demand-building function. "Demarketing" refers to an effort to reduce demand for something. Prior research has focused largely on non-profit efforts to demarket harmful products or behaviors (e.g., smoking, drunk driving, etc.). However, a number of companies actually demarket their own products to communicate the brand's commitment to environmental sustainability. We refer to this practice as "Green Demarketing." Examples include Patagonia's Don't Buy this Jacket ad, REI's Opt Outside campaign, and Glad's ForceFlex commercial encouraging reduced consumption of trash bags.
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This project compares consumer attitudes toward Green Demarketing to those toward traditional green marketing, in both product and institutional advertising contexts. Results show that, when advertising a product, Green Demarketing (vs. traditional green) messages lead consumers to infer egoistic, self-interested motives behind the ad. However, altruistic motives (and subsequent attitudes toward the ad) are enhanced when Green Demarketing messages are couched within an institutional advertising context. In short, if brands want to communicate a Green Demarketing message while avoiding consumer backlash, they should frame it as a simple message from the brand while refraining from advertising their products.
Published at Journal of Advertising (2016)