Consumer Attitudes About Personal and Political Action

People can express their moral views through their purchases or through political action. If a product is morally bad, or bad in other ways, people may refuse to purchase it for themselves, or they may take political action against it. Two questionnaire studies examined the determinants of attitudes toward these two types of action. Both types of action are affected by moral concerns. Political actions are more affected by universalized moral concerns, in which people think that something is wrong for everyone regardless of whether they think it is wrong or not. Some moral principles are seen as absolute values, protected from trade‐offs with other values. The studies also found evidence for moralization of many kinds of attributes, including some that affected only the buyer, particularly those that put the buyer at risk of harm.