Punish Or Permit? Predictors of Consumers’ Reactions to Purity Violations

Seven pre- and mid-pandemic studies find that pathogen threat increases condemnation of morally impure behaviors, but only among high-childhood-SES consumers. This effect is established across social, marketplace, and political domains, using both fictional and real-world scenarios, yielding implications for both researchers and practitioners.

Citation:

Jodie Whelan and Sean Hingston (2021) ,"Punish Or Permit? Predictors of Consumers’ Reactions to Purity Violations", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 49, eds. Tonya Williams Bradford, Anat Keinan, and Matthew Matthew Thomson, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 262-263.