Do What Consumers Say Matter? The Misalignment of Preferences with Unconstrained Ethical Intentions
Auger and Devinney note that nearly all studies of willingness to buy ethically or socially responsibly rest on unconstrained survey answers. They ask how well stated concern for a social or ethical issue predicts behaviour in a more constrained setting where no answer is socially acceptable, comparing traditional survey questions about purchase intention with estimates of individuals' willingness to pay for social attributes. They find that simple survey questions are too noisy to give operationally meaningful information.
Auger and Devinney note that nearly all studies of willingness to buy ethically or socially responsibly rest on unconstrained survey answers. They ask how well stated concern for a social or ethical issue predicts behaviour in a more constrained setting where no answer is socially acceptable, comparing traditional survey questions about purchase intention with estimates of individuals' willingness to pay for social attributes. They find that simple survey questions are too noisy to give operationally meaningful information.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-18.
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Auger, P., & Devinney, T. M. (2007). Do What Consumers Say Matter? The Misalignment of Preferences with Unconstrained Ethical Intentions. Journal of Business Ethics, 76(4), 361-383. doi:10.1007/s10551-006-9287-y.