Motivating sustainability through morality: A daily diary study on the link between moral self-control and clothing consumption

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Highlights

  • A conceptual model of moral self-control is introduced.

  • Captured self-control processes and clothing purchases via a two-week diary study.

  • Analyzed moral and environmental considerations' influence on self-control and purchase.

  • Moral and environmental considerations increased conflict experiences and resistance of purchasing desires.

  • Resistance was a strong predictor of successfully inhibiting clothing purchases.

Abstract

Extensive research has documented the frequent gap between people's intentions to perform environmentally significant behavior and their actual behavior. Despite this, limited research has empirically unpacked the processes and conditions under which people's environmental considerations influence behavior and when they do not. The present research sought to meet this research need by investigating the influence of moral and environmental considerations on purchasing decisions related to clothing consumption. In doing so, we embedded environmental considerations within the broader concept of morality and drew upon self-control research to develop a conceptual model of moral self-control comprising moral considerations, conflict, resistance, and purchase. The conceptual model was assessed using data from a large two-week diary study (N = 594; nobs = 7,880) conducted in the United Kingdom. A multilevel path model at the within-person level revealed that moral considerations were associated with stronger conflict experiences, more frequent attempts to resist clothing desires, and less frequent clothing purchasing. These findings highlight the processes through which moral (and environmental) considerations exert their influence on clothing purchasing decisions, as well as help pinpoint when and why people sometimes fail to act in accordance with their moral and biospheric values.

Introduction

Recent global assessments underscore the urgent need for transformational action across societal levels to mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss (IPBES, 2019; IPCC, 2018, 2019). This transformational action must be instigated by all sectors and actors, including consumers. Individuals in their role as consumers can, amongst other, contribute to mitigation by changing the quantity and type of goods and services demanded (Dietz, Gardner, Gilligan, Stern, & Vandenbergh, 2009; Ivanova et al., 2020; Nielsen et al., 2020, Nielsen et al., 2020). Such changes include shifting demand from meat products to non-animal products, from private to public transport, and from conventionally produced consumer goods to those produced using low-impact production methods (Ivanova et al., 2020; van Vuuren et al., 2018).

Research has documented that many people are highly concerned about climate change and rapidly declining biodiversity and are willing to make behavioral changes to mitigate these (European Commission, 2013; McLoughlin et al., 2019; Poortinga, Whitmarsh, Steg, Böhm, & Fisher, 2019). The extent to which people's concern manifests in substantial and enduring changes in behavior and consumption patterns is, however, uncertain. This uncertainty is rooted in decades worth of psychological research documenting the difficulty of effectuating aspired behavioral changes and the commonly observed gap between people's goals or intentions and their actual behavior (Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002; Sheeran, 2002; Sheeran & Webb, 2016). Although the difficulty of executing a behavior change is universal and the intention-behavior gap has been observed across domains, these conditions may be amplified in the environmental domain. For example, the benefits associated with environmentally significant behavior are often external to the self and to be reaped long into the future. This increases the probability that environmental considerations, i.e., considerations of the environmental impacts of behavior, only feature weakly and/or irregularly in most behavioral and consumption decisions (Nielsen, 2017; Weber, 2015, 2017). Moreover, even when environmental considerations are salient during decision-making, they may be more easily overpowered by self-interested desires and motives.

In environmental psychology, the inclusion and subsequent influence of environmental considerations on behavior have predominantly been studied through the application of conceptual behavioral models, such as the Theory of Planned Behavior or the Value-Belief-Norm Theory (Ajzen, 1991; Klöckner, 2013; Stern, 2000). These conceptual models are useful for numerous purposes, however, they are not well-suited to understand how environmental considerations influence the decision-making processes underlying behavior and how these unfold over time (Nielsen, 2017, 2019). This is, in part, a function of the models' most proximal antecedents to behavior, such as intentions or personal norms, typically only have modest explanatory power of, especially frequently performed, behavior (Bamberg & Möser, 2007; Sheeran, 2002). Recent theoretical and empirical calls have therefore been made to promote stronger consideration and integration of self-regulation and self-control processes, which are instrumental in unpacking the intention-behavior relationship (Bamberg, 2013; Nielsen, 2017; Verplanken & Sato, 2011). Moreover, the commonly used methods of cross-sectional surveys and laboratory experiments are not ideal for capturing the processes involved in the continued performance of many environmentally significant behaviors nor assessing the conditions under which people's environmental considerations influence behavior and when they do not (Bolger & Laurenceau, 2013; Hofmann, Baumeister, Förster, & Vohs, 2012). Obtaining a better understanding of these processes and conditions are essential for identifying what psychological, social, and contextual factors are key to performing environmentally significant behavior and leading a low-carbon life. Such understanding can, in turn, guide the selection and design of behavior change interventions to improve their effectiveness and to help ensure that people maintain their environmentally significant behavior changes over time (Marteau, 2017; Michie, M van Stralen, & West, 2011; Nielsen, Clayton, et al., 2020).

In this work, we aim to contribute to this research agenda by investigating the influence of moral and environmental considerations on decisions to purchase (or not to purchase) clothing over a two-week period using a daily diary study. In achieving this aim, we draw upon self-control research to develop and test a conceptual model of moral self-control to capture the processes through which moral and environmental considerations may exert their influence on purchasing decisions. Our conceptual model thus aims to capture the processes involved in repeated self-control and purchase decisions, which distinguishes it from the prediction models commonly employed to study environmentally significant behavior (e.g., Theory of Planned Behavior or Value-Belief-Norm Theory; see Nielsen, 2017).

In testing our conceptual model, we embed environmental considerations within the umbrella of morality, a decision we justify below. This decision permits the simultaneous bridging of research on morality and self-control, which, despite their conceptual overlap, so far has mainly led different lives (Hofmann, Meindl, Mooijman, & Graham, 2018). Viewed from a broader theoretical perspective, integrating self-control insights into morality research can help elucidate the processes by which moral values and standards are enacted and adhered to. And conversely, incorporating morality into self-control research may improve the understanding of the moral nature of many self-control domains and decisions, including the consumption of clothing (Hofmann et al., 2018).

The present work builds on the central premise that the challenge of environmentally significant behavior change is, at least partly, a moral issue. Morality can be characterized as a culturally transmitted set of normative values and rules that enable people to live in (more or less) harmony. Morality can constrain action by defining and identifying what constitutes morally “right” or “wrong” behavior, which often motivates selfless behaviors (Hofmann et al., 2018; Janoff-Bulman, Sheikh, & Hepp, 2009). As such, a moral issue is one that has become a matter of right or wrong and directly reflective of a person's moral values (Feinberg, Kovacheff, Teper, & Inbar, 2019; Rozin, 1999). The moral transformation of an issue occurs via the process of moralization whereby a previously neutral issue obtains moral status (e.g., whether or not it is morally acceptable to eat meat), which can occur at the individual, group, and cultural level (we return to moralization below).

Shifting and reducing consumption patterns to mitigate climate change and to limit environmental degradation can, we contend, be construed as a moral issue (Broome, 2008; Jamieson, 2010; Markowitz, 2012). Because existing consumption patterns, particularly in Western countries, are fueling climate change and causing harm in locations far removed from where the consumption occurs, they appear directly relevant to central dimensions of morality, including harm and fairness (Graham et al., 2011; Gray, Young, & Waytz, 2012). In support hereof, recent studies in moral psychology have demonstrated a link between moral values and environmentally significant behavior (Hurst & Stern, 2020; Wolsko, 2017). For example, in the United States, liberals tend to be environmental activists because they support the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity moral foundations more so than do conservatives (Haidt, 2012). Conservatives do support harm/care and fairness/reciprocity concerns but to a lesser extent than liberals. This link has been further supported by Feinberg and Willer's (2013) study, which showed that environmental issues are considered as moral issues among liberals who emphasize care and justice considerations.

Morality is highly relevant for understanding environmentally significant behavior since performing such behavior typically requires setting aside self-interested motives to advance biospheric prosperity. It thus involves the same self-restraining element as moral behavior. People who endorse biospheric values often act on these values because they believe it is their moral responsibility to protect the environment (Bolderdijk, Steg, Geller, Lehman, & Postmes, 2013; Thøgersen & Ölander, 2006). Moral and biospheric values are therefore theorized to share substantial conceptual overlap.

Although the link between morality and environmental behavior has also been observed in recent studies (e.g., Feinberg & Willer, 2013; Jia, Soucie, Alisat, Curtin, & Pratt, 2017), there are features of climate change that limit the likelihood of mitigation as registering as a moral imperative. These features include abstractness, cognitive complexity, uncertainty, and long time horizons (Markowitz & Shariff, 2012). Some of these features are also what make the exertion of self-control to adhere to environmental values and goals a difficult exercise (Nielsen, 2019). Consequently, a deeper understanding of the challenges of bringing about environmentally significant behavior (change) should not only focus on the question of how moral values and judgments are shaped via processes of education, persuasion, and reasoning—processes that aggregated over longer timespans constitute what has been referred to as the process of moralization (Feinberg et al., 2019; Rozin, 1999). It should also focus on the question of whether and how such moral values may effectively motivate morally consistent behavior in light of internal and external barriers. As Monin and colleagues have noted, issues of moral self-control or willpower (vs. moral self-control failure or weakness) have not received the amount of attention they deserve from a theoretical point of view (Monin, Pizarro, & Beer, 2007; see also Hofmann et al., 2018). The present work seeks to contribute to filling this gap by carefully tracing how moral considerations influence the self-control process in the context of clothing consumption.

Self-control is embodied in the broader concept of self-regulation (Baumgartner, Langenbach, Gianotti, Müri, & Knoch, 2019; Inzlicht, Werner, Briskin, & Roberts, 2021; Nielsen, 2017) and can be defined as the process or behavior of overcoming a temptation or prepotent response in favor of a long-term goal (Milyavskaya, Berkman, & Ridder, 2019; Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone, 2004). Self-control is exerted when people are confronted with impulses to enact previously performed ‘problematic’ behavior or self-interested temptations that, if enacted, would undermine long-term goals or values (e.g., to live a low-carbon life or to avoid causing harm to humans and animals). For example, a person trying to shift from a carnivorous to a vegetarian diet will undoubtedly experience temptations to eat meat and must exert self-control to resist such temptations to prevent setbacks. Given self-control's function of ensuring correspondence between behavior and long-term objectives it plays a key role in successfully implementing and maintaining behavioral changes (Duckworth, Milkman, & Laibson, 2019).

Recent years have witnessed a deeper understanding of the various situational and dispositional factors that influence self-control (Hofmann, Friese, & Strack, 2009; Milyavskaya, Inzlicht, Hope, & Koestner, 2015), alongside a deeper understanding of the key components involved in the self-control process (Inzlicht et al., 2021; Kotabe & Hofmann, 2015). To better understand the role of moral considerations in the self-control process, we drew on the framework proposed by Hofmann et al. (2012), distinguishing among desire, conflict, resistance, and enactment as key components. In a nutshell, the self-control process is set in motion by the presence of a desire or urge for enacting potentially problematic behavior. A desire refers to a state of wanting to have or do something and can be defined as an “affectively charged cognitive event in which an object or activity that is associated with pleasure or relief of discomfort is in focal attention” (Kavanagh, Andrade, & May, 2005). Desires emerge from an interplay of triggering conditions in the environment and need states within people (Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996; Hofmann et al., 2012). In a clothing context, a desire may, for example, emerge from observing an online advertisement for a new pair of shoes or from an internal realization that a new warm jacket is needed for an upcoming skiing holiday.

When a desire is experienced and sufficiently strong, people will generally seek to enact the desired behavior, unless deemed infeasible in the given situation. This is where the second model component, conflict, comes in. To the extent that a given desire is perceived as conflicting with a person's set of (moral) values and long-term goals, a behavior-correcting process of self-control is instigated. In other words, the presence of conflict transforms the desire into a temptation, demarcating a self-control dilemma (Fishbach & Converse, 2011; Hofmann & Van Dillen, 2012). According to the model, conflict activates step three of the process, resistance. Resistance represents the corrective part of self-control, the investment of motivational effort to counteract the desire's strength (for details, see Kotabe & Hofmann, 2015). In the fourth step, the problematic desire is either resisted, representing successful self-control, or enacted, representing self-control failure (Bernecker, Job, & Hofmann, 2018; Hofmann et al., 2018). Taken together, the process model thus suggests that the likelihood of self-control failure in any given situation is influenced by the preceding three steps.

How may moral considerations shape the self-control process? The starting point for our predictions is the insight that self-control outcomes are not only dependent on ability but also, and perhaps primarily so, on motivation. In fact, recent accounts of self-control posit a prominent role of motivation in decisions to exert self-control and the success thereof (Inzlicht & Schmeichel, 2012; Milyavskaya et al., 2015). From the perspective of the process model, the motivation to exert self-control is captured by the resistance component, which is itself influenced by how much conflict is experienced. Conflict emerges to the extent that present desires are perceived as being in conflict with the perceived value of relevant long-term goals or values (Kotabe & Hofmann, 2015). Because people do not value all long-term goals equally, they are more motivated to exert self-control to protect highly-valued goals over those of lesser significance (Inzlicht, Berkman, & Hutcherson, 2017; Milyavskaya et al., 2015).

As background assumptions, we reasoned that individual differences in the strength of moral considerations exist and can be measured. While outside the scope of our work, such differences may stem from differential exposure to moral socialization and persuasion that together shape the moralization of environmentally significant behaviors and thus the valuation of certain types of behaviors as morally right and wrong, respectively. Moralizing self-control preferences thus adds a layer of significance by converting self-control into a matter of right and wrong with self-control failure being morally condemned (Graham et al., 2011; Horberg, Oveis, Keltner, & Cohen, 2009; Mooijman et al., 2018; Rozin, 1999). The conversion of self-control derived from a personal preference, which may fluctuate over time, into a more absolute and resilient moral value may have significant implications for self-control. For example, people who previously construed meat consumption as a morally neutral behavior may reinterpret the meaning of this behavior and imbue it with moral properties upon learning about the environmental and animal-welfare consequences of meat production and consumption (Feinberg et al., 2019; Poore & Nemecek, 2018). Moral values may carry remarkable motivational power for self-restraint because they can significantly raise people's awareness of the moral nature of a decision (Mooijman et al., 2018). In other words, moral values may first and foremost aid the detection of conflict or discrepancies between an intended course of action (i.e., the desire to purchase low-cost but unsustainable clothing) and one's intrinsic values and standards (i.e., caring about the environment).

We therefore predicted that moral considerations would exert its primary influence on self-control decisions through increasing conflict, which in turn would (indirectly) increase resistance and reduce the likelihood of purchase (as depicted in Fig. 1 described below). In other words, the impact of moral values on the self-control process should be discernible as a direct effect on conflict and an indirect (i.e., transported) effect on resistance and enactment. Although the predicted direct and indirect relationships between moral considerations and conflict, resistance, and purchase were derived from theory, they were not developed prior to the data collection and our results should therefore be considered exploratory.

Section snippets

Present research

The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of moral and environmental considerations on the self-control process and purchasing decisions and, importantly, how these co-vary within people across time and settings. We did so in the context of clothing consumption using an intense longitudinal method in the form a two-week diary study with daily reporting. The diary method offered the opportunity to capture decision-making and self-control processes in close proximity to their

Participants

The online research platform, Prolific, was used to recruit study participants to complete a two-week diary study on clothing consumption. Because statistical power in intense longitudinal data is a complex function of the number of measurement occasions as well as the number of participants sampled, among other parameters (e.g., Bolger & Laurenceau, 2013), we sampled as many participants as our budget allowed for to maximize power. This yielded a goal of 700 participants. Recruitment was

Descriptive and frequency data

Participants reported 1,472 desire experiences, and the average level of desire conflict was M = 3.57 (measured from 1 to 8; SD = 2.20), with 24% of desires rated as not conflicting at all, 19% as very little conflict, and 6% as very much in conflict. On average, desires were resisted 49.7% of occasions and enacted (with or without prior resistance) 36% of occasions. The average level of resistance (motivation) was M = 3.47 (measured from 1 to 8; SD = 2.70). Moral considerations were included

Discussion

Environmentally significant behavior typically involves setting aside short-term interests to the benefit of collective prosperity in the longer term. As such, it speaks to important aspects of morality and self-control. The present study followed in the footsteps of recent research seeking to illuminate the conceptual similarities between morality and self-control by exploring how moral considerations translate into environmentally significant behavior. In doing so, we proposed and tested a

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Kristian S. Nielsen: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft. Wilhelm Hofmann: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the Trash-2-Cash project (grant agreement No. 646226) funded by the European Commission under Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, and the Mistra Future Fashion Project Phase II funded by the Swedish Mistra Foundation.

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