We provide new evidence on consumer demand for ethical products from experiments conducted in a U.S. grocery store chain. We find that sales of the two most popular coffees rose by almost 10% when they carried a Fair Trade label as compared to a generic placebo label. Demand for the higher...

Darwin’s (1871) observation that evolution has produced in us certain emotions responding to right and wrong conduct that lack any obvious basis in individual utility is a useful springboard from which to clarify the role of emotion in moral judgment. The problem is whether a certain class of...

Surveys indicate that a majority of consumers would prefer to buy products made in workplaces with fair labor standards rather than alternatives and would be willing to pay a higher price for such products. There is no clear evidence, however, that many people would actually behave in this...

We study whether and how parents interfere paternalistically in their children’s intertemporal decision-making. Based on experiments with over 2,000 members of 610 families, we find that parents anticipate their children’s present bias and aim to mitigate it. Using a novel method to measure...

We study whether and how parents interfere paternalistically in their children's intertemporal decision-making. Based on experiments with over 2,000 members of 610 families, we find that parents anticipate their children's present bias and aim to mitigate it. Using a novel method to measure...

The paper supplements the theory of consumer behavior with insights from the primary sources of Islam. A consumer who maximizes utility operates within four dimensions: moderation, extravagance, waste, and niggardliness. These dimensions take different meanings in each social stratum. A...

In reciprocal interactions, both genuine kindness and self-interested material gain may motivate socially beneficial actions. The paper presents results from two experiments that distinguish the role of perceived motives in reciprocal decision making from the role of outcomes or perceived...

Can social preferences sustain a for-profit company? We analyze panel data tracking payments of 57,196 customers for five years from an online retail firm whose profitability relies on consumers' altruism. Most customers are generous and remain so over time. However, their generosity slowly...

The compromise effect—i.e., the preference for the middle option—is an established bias in behavioral economics, but has not been experimentally validated in the field. In the current study I test the compromise effect in a natural context, and whether this bias can be used to stimulate...

To maximize their impact, socially responsible households can invest responsibly (SRI), consume responsibly (SRC), or do both. The key question of this paper is, which mix of SRI and SRC leads to a desired impact with the lowest loss of utility for responsible households. In a closed...