The Role of Anticipated Guilt and its Neutralisation in Explaining Responsible Online Shopping

Abstract

Although responsible consumption has been the target of growing interest in academic research, the antecedents of responsible online shopping remain poorly understood. In this study, we address this gap in prior research by focusing on the role of anticipated guilt in explaining responsible online shopping. By using data from 479 Finnish consumers, we aim to answer two research questions: (1) how strong an antecedent of responsible online shopping intention is anticipated guilt in relation to other potential antecedents and (2) how efficiently can consumers regulate their resulting feelings of guilt by using different kinds of neutralisation techniques? We find anticipated guilt to be a strong antecedent of responsible online shopping intention and the denial of responsibility, the denial of injury, and the appeal to higher loyalties to be the most efficient neutralisation techniques for consumers to regulate their feelings of guilt that result from not engaging in responsible online shopping.