4 research outputs found
Words-deeds gap for the purchase of fairtrade products: A systematic literature review
Nowadays ethical consumerism is part of the agenda of consumers,
businesses, and governments for its promise of a brighter future through the
consumption of goods with added social or environmental value. Consumption of fair
trade goods has been enjoying huge growth in the last few years as people are becoming
more conscious of their consumption practices.
Objective: In this piece of research we identify existing literature on the words-deeds
gap for the purchase of fairly traded products. Moreover, we present and analyze the
moderators to the ethical purchasing gap.
Method: A collection of research articles was compiled using a key-word search in
3 databases: Scopus, Springerlink, and Sciencedirect. The research was carried out
using various groups of keywords and completed using the following three criteria:
articles published in English, between 2010 and 2018, in refereed journals. Further to
the systematic literature review, all pertinent articles were imported into Atlas.ti for further
thematic analysis.
Results: Two thousand and seventy eight articles were identified from which 32 met the
inclusion criteria. The content analysis resulted in the following themes: Values, Theory
of Planned Behavior and Theory of Reasoned Action, Willingness-to-pay, Labels and
Certification, Religion, Guilt, Dual Attitudes, Demographics.
Conclusion: Despite “moral” products tasting better and self-claims to this direction,
there is still a gap between claimed and actual consumption. Research has mostly
concentrated on different perspectives, such as willingness to pay, items from the theory
of planned behavior or theory of reasoned action. Given the recent developments in the
theory of dual attitudes and further to our research this area is currently underrepresented
in FT research and could provide useful insights that may increase consumption of
FT product