Implicit Ethical Consumerism: Development and Cross-cultural Validation of a Novel Affect-Misattribution Measure

The literature has documented a pervasive attitude‐behavior gap in ethical consumption, whereby many consumers do notconsistently translate their expressed positive attitudes toward ethical products into behavior. For marketers investing in socialresponsibility initiatives, this suggests that more accurate segmentation and demand forecasting may require an implicitmeasure of ethical consumerism. This study draws from literatures in ethical consumption and the psychology of attitudes todevelop and validate such a measurement tool. Across three pretests and three studies, findings show that our implicit measure(based on the Affect Misattribution Procedure [AMP]) is cross‐culturally robust in predicting ethical consumption behaviorbeyond effects of explicit measures. Overall, this study indicates that academics and practitioners can enhance their predictivecapabilities regarding ethical consumption behavior by integrating the AMP‐inspired measure with traditional explicitmeasures, rather than solely relying on the latter.