Executive Summary:
Everyone agrees it is wrong to buy things made with sweatshop labor. Yet many of us are willing to justify our decision when a product—a pair of jeans, for example—is something we really want. HBS doctoral student Neeru Paharia and Professor Rohit Deshpandé study the dark side of buying behavior. Their good news: We can influence change for the better. Key concepts include:
- Moral standards about sweatshop labor are subject to change when desire for a product is high.
- Consumers have more power than they think to influence how products are made.
- If shoppers become more aware of their own rationalizations, they might think twice about buying products made with sweatshop labor.
As consumers, we can brush up on our world geography simply by reading the tags in our clothing. Nicaragua, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mauritius, Vietnam, Morocco—there's a mini-United Nations in almost everyone's closet.
While it's easy enough to determine where our T-shirts and jeans come from, we don't always know the conditions under which they were made. In the working paper "Sweatshop Labor is Wrong Unless the Jeans are Cute: Motivated Moral Disengagement" [PDF], HBS doctoral student Neeru Paharia and Professor Rohit Deshpandé take a closer look at what happens when consumers are presented with the option of purchasing desirable items that have been made with sweatshop labor.
What their findings suggest: Our moral benchmarks are subject to change, particularly during an afternoon at the local mall.
"People have moral standards, but context matters," observes Deshpandé, who teaches the required MBA course Leadership and Corporate Accountability. "When we play with the context of desirability and price, there's a sudden change in standards."
In the first experiment, Paharia and Deshpandé divided 258 participants into groups; in one group, participants read, "Imagine that you are shopping and found the perfect pair of jeans. They look good on you and fit great. A large amount of sweatshop labor was used to produce these jeans." The scenario was the same for the second group, but participants were told that no sweatshop labor was used to make the jeans. Participants were then asked to answer the following questions, based on a scale of 1 to 7: How desirable are these jeans to you? How good do you think you'll look in these jeans? How likely would you be to purchase these jeans?
Next, participants responded to four statements, each of which draws on some of the common moral rationalizations used to justify sweatshop labor such as: "The use of sweatshop labor is OK because otherwise those workers would not have jobs"; "Without sweatshops, poorer countries couldn't develop"; "Buying clothes that are made with sweatshop labor is OK if it saves the consumer money because clothes are not affordable"; and "The use of sweatshop labor is OK because companies must remain competitive and all other companies do it." A control group did not read about the jeans scenario and only answered the four moral disengagement questions as a means of determining if the "no sweatshop labor" condition was prompting a reaction of moral righteousness. (The researchers assume a sweatshop to be a work environment with long hours, minimal pay, and difficult or even dangerous conditions; it may also include child labor.)
Paharia and Deshpandé found no significant difference in the index of moral disengagement between the control group and the "no sweatshop labor" group. But they did find levels of moral disengagement to be significantly higher in the sweatshop labor group when desirability for a product was high.
"Recent psychology research indicates that moral judgments can be influenced by emotions and other affective conditions," says Paharia. "We wanted to bring this phenomenon to the consumer domain to determine how consumers' desire for a product impacts their moral judgment."
The "Carrying Boy" in an Indiana
glass works, 1908, by
photographer Lewis Hine
(Photo courtesy
Baker Library Historical Collections)
Paharia and Deshpandé up the ante in a second experiment involving 253 participants and a hypothetical pair of Nike shoes. In this scenario, price, not appearance, is the driving desirability factor, with participants randomly assigned to one of four conditions: high desirability versus low desirability crossed with high sweatshop labor versus no sweatshop labor. For the high desirability condition, participants were told to imagine receiving a 75 percent discount on a $175 pair of shoes that they are extremely happy with. In the low desirability condition, they receive a 5 percent discount on the same shoes but are merely satisfied with the product.
Participants then answer a series of questions about the shoes' desirability similar to those used in the jeans experiment. This exercise is followed by information about Nike's labor practices; in the high sweatshop labor group, participants read, "Imagine that you've just read an article that suggests that Nike uses sweatshop labor to make its shoes"; the other group reads that Nike does not use sweatshop labor. Participants then answer a series of four moral disengagement questions similar to those used in the first experiment. Results showed that the moral disengagement index was significantly higher when both sweatshop labor was high and desirability was high.
"It's troubling that so much of our social and economic system is based on our moral judgment, especially if it's easy for us to justify our actions based on what we want." – Neeru Paharia
"It's troubling that so much of our social and economic system is based on our moral judgment, especially if it's easy for us to justify our actions based on what we want," Paharia remarks. "If these rationalizations are pointed out to people, maybe they would gain a better sense of their source and consider if it's what they really believe or if they're being influenced by other motives."
Deshpandé wonders how a down economy will affect consumer sensitivity: "If I just lost my job, will I be more likely to morally disengage and buy the cheapest things I can find without really thinking about how they've been manufactured?" Given past consumer behavior, the answer would seem to be a resounding yes. Discount retailer Wal-Mart recently reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings, despite the economic downturn, as shoppers continue their never-ending hunt for low prices.
And then there's the trickier issue of style, that certain something that makes an article of clothing a must-have for your closet. "We're all confronted with the same dilemma," says Paharia. "The jeans are cute, and you want them, but in the back of your mind you know it's quite possible that some harm came in making them."
"My initial thinking was that it's driven primarily by economics—if the price is right, you will disengage," adds Deshpandé. "It's the cuteness that's the troubling part; when it's not a matter of survival, when you haven't lost your job, and you disengage because something is cute … that's even more disturbing."
Paharia notes that successful companies such as American Apparel make a point of using non-sweatshop, U.S. labor. But they tend to be the exception to the rule. As recently as 2007, the BBC reported children from India working under "slave-like" conditions to produce clothing for a sub-contractor to the Gap. "Consumers, for the most part, don't punish companies for failing to monitor how their clothing is made," Paharia says. "Yet they have the power to demand products that meet whatever specifications they want."
The effects of consumer decisions and the cognitive disconnects that sometimes occur in making those decisions are a primary focus of Paharia's research. "A big chunk of marketing is around the issue of how we consume to express our identity," she says, noting that the diamond market was one of her original interests. "Diamonds have no intrinsic value, but they have such great symbolic and cultural value that demand has created environmental destruction and wars."
Paharia hopes her work will bring some attention to the power consumers have to create change. Things like moral disengagement get in the way of consumers demanding harm-free products.
"There has been a great deal of social activism directed at 'evil' companies and a lot of attention given to corporate social responsibility," she says. "Companies aren't necessarily designed to be moral or immoral; they're designed to make a profit. So why don't we take a closer look at how consumers make decisions and what that means for the world?"
About the author
Julia Hanna is Associate Editor of the HBS Alumni Bulletin.
