This article introduces a two-dimensional model that aims to capture the complexity of motives of contemporary ethical consumers. The framework identifies four broad motivations for ethical consumption: Self-actualization, Hedonic, Conformity and Self-Orientation. To illustrate how the framework may be used, we present the results of two exploratory studies; the first examining the motivations of self-identifying ethical consumers (173 consumers from 27 nationalities), and the second analysing the primary motivating message of a set of 23 advertisements for ethical products from eight different countries. Our results indicate that while all four categories of motivation are salient to consumers, advertisers in our sample tended to focus their message on only one category of motivations (selfactualization)
