绿色消费的许可效应:绿色让我们更不道德?

Psychological Licensing of Green Consumption:Green Make Us Immoral?

绿色消费属于道德范畴,但消费者进行绿色消费后会减少绿色行为甚至变得更加自私,这便是绿色消费的许可效应。从时间维度上来说,绿色消费许可效应的产生包括启动效应-绿色消费-许可效应三个阶段。围绕该效应的发生机制,道德证书模型认为,绿色消费所建构起的道德形象将驱动个体对许可行为作出合理化的解释;然而,面对明显不道德的许可行为,则只能通过道德学分模型起作用,即借用绿色消费累计的道德学分进行抵消。从根本上来说,化解许可效应需要消费者养成绿色的生活方式,它包括两个阶段:从绿色行为到绿色自我,再从绿色自我到绿色行为。未来研究需要完善该效应理论探讨,也需要发现这一效应的个体差异为干预提供参考。

Global environmental issues such as pollution of air and water,global warming,natural resource depletion,and climate change have brought serious challenges to the sustainable development of all countries.Global environmental problems are mainly caused by human activities,and consumers play an important role in promoting the development of a green society.People think that green consumers are more cooperative,altruistic,and moral.Unfortunately,psychological licensing of green consumption makes us immoral.In the first section,we introduced the concepts and characteristics of psychological licensing of green consumption.Previous moral behavior could endow people with a psychological license,a perception that they were permitted to take an action or express a thought without fear.Green consumption could also make psychological licensing.We presented evidence that green consumption in one domain could license otherwisediscrediting behavior in the same domain or an unrelated domain.Psychological licensing was not induced only by actually green consumption behavior;simply expressed green consumption attitude could also reduce subsequent moral behavior.In the second section,we explored the process of psychological licensing.From the time dimension,the licensing effect of green consumption included three stages:firstly,priming referred to the processing of the initial stimulus that affected the subsequent response to the stimulus,because the processing of the priming stimulus made the content more accessible.Secondly,consumers’perception of green products was full of conflicts,from product level to image level.This conflict perception led consumers to improve their moral image.At the same time,unconsciously,it would automatically suppress green information.Thirdly,people might be less likely to act morally after recalling past green consumption behavior.Because green consumption had already validated their moral qualities,people might feel absolved from the need to prove themselves further.In the third section,we explored its psychological mechanism.Perceiving oneself as moral led to a reduction in moral behavior,whereas perceiving oneself as less moral motivated increase in moral behavior.This pattern had been interpreted in terms of moral self-regulation,balancing moral self-consistent behavior against the costs inherent in moral behavior.Moral self-regulation included two models:namely moral credits and moral credentials which could be viewed as two independent routes.In the fourth section,we proposed two ways which could avoid psychological licensing,including changing behavior by shifting green selfconcept,and shaping pro-environmental values by changing behavior.For one,the theory of self-perception held that people would judge their attitude towards specific things according to their behavior,helping individuals build up stronger associations between one’s self-concept and green behavior,and therefore facilitated the development of green lifestyle.For another,the adoption of green lifestyle promoted pro-environmental values and green consumption.In the final section,we discussed several limitations of previous studies and made some recommendations for future research accordingly.