Relationship between consumer ethics and social rewards-punishments in Mainland China

Abstract

With the increasing concern on the efficient measures to restrain consumer's unethical behaviours such as purchasing and using piratical software in a global market, it is necessary to explore the role of social rewards-punishments in consumer's ethical decision-making. This paper studies the relationship between social rewards-punishments and consumer ethics through an empirical investigation with 535 useful questionnaires gathered in Mainland China. The findings indicate that in this market, consumers' perception of social rewards-punishments influences their ethical judgement significantly in different consumption situations. Moreover, the soft dimension of social rewards-punishments plays constantly a positive role in the ethical decision-making, but the hard dimension functions with two-side roles: positive in the definitely unethical situations but negative in the possibly unethical situations. Diverse roles of different dimensions of social rewards-punishments in ethical decision-making are correlated with consumption situations and consumers' individual variables. Some valued implications for business practices are offered together with suggestions for the future research.

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