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The theory of licensing effect suggests that consumers tend to perform self-interested or self-indulgent actions after undertaking altruistic behaviors. How do past altruistic experiences affect the willingness of consumers to perform charitable behaviors in the future? Results from an exploratory approach comprising three laboratory studies and one field experiment demonstrate the existence of licensing effect in charitable conditions. We find that consumers are more unwilling to undertake charitable activities when they recall past similar experiences. The donation resources (time/money) do not influence the licensing effect. Two other variables moderate the size of the licensing effect: the way in which the initial charitable behavior is recalled (abstract vs. concrete) and the attribution for initial charitable behavior (collective vs. individual). We find that consumers are more reluctant to carry out charitable behavior when: (1) they recall the concrete details rather than the abstract goal of past activity; (2) consumers are praised for individual efforts rather than collective contribution in past activity. These findings offer new theoretical insights into the licensing effect in consumers’ charitable behaviors and set out practical implications for the sustainability of charitable programs.

Current research on consumer behavior of green advertising mostly focuses on advertising attitude or consumer behavior, while few studies have extended the topic to explore the consumers’ behavior after green consumption. The “Licensing effect”, which is a paradoxical side effect of green advertising, has been verified to exist in the consumption context in many countries. This paradoxical effect between cognition and behavior refers to the circumstance that consumers show non-green behavior after green consumption, which is contrary to the original intention of green advertising. However, at present, few scholars have verified and deeply explored that effect in the context of China. This study explores the “licensing effect” of green advertising through two factors: environmental protection cognition and advertising appeal. Through a 2 × 3 experiment, we find that: 1. The licensing effect is applicable in the Chinese consumption context; 2. The licensing effect only exists in individuals with low environmental protection cognition; 3. The appeal mode of green advertising turns out to be an effective moderator, and rational appeal can effectively prevent the licensing effect. This research expands the research scope of green advertising and provides a new vision for the study of consumer behavior in green advertising. In addition, the moderation role of advertising appeal verified by our study has guiding significance for green advertising practice.

Replication attempt of Study 1 from the original paper by Khan & Dhar (2006).

Unsuccessful replication attempt of Study 1 from the original paper by Khan & Dhar (2006).

To reduce obesity and thus promote healthy food choices, front-of-pack (FOP) labels have been introduced. Though FOP labels help identify healthy foods, their impact on actual food choices is rather small. A newly developed so-called swipe task was used to investigate whether the type of label used (summary vs. nutrient-specific) had differential effects on different operationalizations of the “healthier choice” measure (e.g., calories and sugar). After learning about the product offerings of a small online store, observers (N = 354) could, by means of a swipe gesture, purchase the products they needed for a weekend with six people. Observers were randomly assigned to one of five conditions, two summary label conditions (Nutri-Score and HFL), two nutrient (sugar)-specific label conditions (manga and comic), or a control condition without a label. Unexpectedly, more products (+7.3 products)—albeit mostly healthy ones—and thus more calories (+1732 kcal) were purchased in the label conditions than in the control condition. Furthermore, the tested labels had different effects with respect to the different operationalizations (e.g., manga reduced sugar purchase). We argue that the additional green-labeled healthy products purchased (in label conditions) “compensate” for the purchase of red-labeled unhealthy products (see averaging bias and licensing effect).

O rótulo “origem biológica” tem impacto na perceção de características que não são diretamente relacionadas com o método de produção do alimento (e.g., menos calorias que os produtos convencionais, mais saudável) e consequentemente no comportamento do consumidor. Sendo a agricultura biológica um método de produção que não contem inputs sintéticos (Ponisio et al., 2015), não deveria influenciar a perceção de características como a informação calórica do produto visto que não se alteram macronutrientes. Prada, Rodrigues, e Garrido (2016) mostraram que as pessoas avaliam com maior leniência a falha de um treino físico de um alvo que escolhe comer uma refeição biológica (vs. uma refeição convencional). Replicámos conceptualmente o estudo de Prada e colaboradores (2016) com o objetivo de replicar se o método de produção do alimento consumido influencia o comportamento do participante tanto numa tarefa de natureza física (i.e., tempo na posição de “prancha”) como cognitiva (i.e., tempo despendido numa sopa de letras), sendo esperado que os participantes despendessem menor esforço (i.e., menos tempo) em ambas as tarefas quando nas condições em que estes haviam escolhido (vs. escolha determinada a priori) o alimento de origem biológica (vs. convencional). Os resultados vão ao encontro dos de Prada, e colaboradores (2016) – as participantes que escolheram o alimento de origem biológica tendem a fazer prancha durante menos tempo e também passam menos tempo a fazer a sopa de letras. Assim, entender estes comportamentos é útil para prevenir enviesamentos nos julgamentos sobre a alimentação biológica e as consequências que destes advêm. The organic label have impact in people’s perception regarding non direct related characteristics concerning the products production mode (eg. less calories than conventional products, healthier) and as a consequence that influence consumers’ behaviour. Defining organic farming as a method of production that don’t use synthetic inputs (Ponisio et al., 2015) shouldn’t influence the products’ characteristics such as caloric content since it doesn’t change macronutrients. Prada, Rodrigues, & Garrido (2016) study shows that people evaluate more with more lenience a target that misses a physical exercise practice after eating an organic meal (vs. a conventional meal). We replicate conceptually Prada, et al. (2016) study to try and replicate if a products method of production would influence the own behaviour in a physical task (i.e. time spending on a “plank” position) and on a cognitive one (i.e. time spend on a wordsearch puzzle). We expect that participants put less effort (i.e., less time) on both tasks when participants can choose (vs. have chosen for them) the organic product (vs. a conventional). This results are similar to the ones from Prada, et al. (2016) – participants who have choose to eat organic send less time doing the plank and the wordsearch puzzle. Understanding this behaviours is useful to prevent biased behaviours regarding organic food and the consequences from this behaviours.

Organic claims can influence how a product is perceived in dimensions that are unrelated with the food production method (e.g., organic food is perceived as more healthful and less caloric than conventional food). Such claims can also bias how the consumers of organic food are perceived and how other people judge their behavior. Schuldt and Schwarz (2010) have shown that individuals evaluating a target with a weight-loss goal are more lenient in judging the target forgoing exercise when the target had an organic (vs. conventional) dessert. This impact of organic claims on leniency judgments has been interpreted either as a halo or a licensing effect. In the current research we aim to replicate and extend Schuldt and Schwarz's (2010) results by examining the mechanisms that are more likely to explain the observed leniency judgments. In Experiment 1, we observed that leniency towards a target that has consumed an organic meal is only observed when the target intentionally chooses such organic meal (vs. choice determined by the situation). These findings suggest that the impact of organic claims on leniency judgments is not merely based on a halo effect. Instead, a licensing account emerges as the most probable mechanism. In Experiment 2, we further found that stronger (vs. weaker) motives for forgoing exercise influenced leniency judgments to the same extent as having had an organic meal. Understanding the mechanisms that shape consumers' decisions may have important implications to prevent bias in their judgments about food and exercise. info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion

This paper explores whether previous good deeds may license non-cooperative behavior such as damaging a social surplus for private benefits in Madagascar. We designed a two steps framed experiment, with one control and three treatments. In the first step, the three treatments consist in a task that enables subjects to earn moral credit, whereas the control group just has a neutral task (i.e. unscrambling sentences). The three treatments differ in the framing of the “moral boosting” task. In the second step, subjects are given the possibility to take an amount from a fund allocated to their University. We show that participants in the license condition adopt higher anti-social behavior than participants in control. First, the number of participants who decide to take money from the University’s fund increases under the license condition, and second, the average amount taken is significantly higher than in the control condition, even when only takers are considered. The framing of the preceding task seems to have little impact on self-licensing. However, a low degree of implication encourages greater morally dubious behavior. Finally, we found that license effect exists both for men and women, while the increase of anti- social behavior after a good deed is more pronounced for men.

According to the so-called ‘self-licensing effect’, committing to a virtuous act in a preceding choice may lead to behave less virtuously in the succeeding decision. Consequently, well-intentioned policies can lead to overall counter-productive effects by licensing people to behave badly in related behaviors. On the other side, motivational crowding theory argues that constraining people to adopt a desirable behavior can backfire. We use of a classroom experiment to test whether a regulatory framework to incentivize individuals to adopt pro-environmental behavior generate similar spillovers in terms of licensing effect than a non-regulatory framework. We show that the way the good deed is caused doesn’t seem to influence the licensing effect. Nevertheless, we found that business- and environmental-orientated majors react adversely to the regulatory framework. We show that environmental-orientated students exhibit higher intrinsically motivations than business-orientated ones. Accordingly, we suggest that the licensing effect is more likely to arise when the preceding ‘virtuous’ act is freely chosen (respectively regulatory caused) for non-intrinsically (respectively intrinsically) motivated individuals.