How Envy Encourages Beliefs in Unethical Consumer Behaviour: The Role of Religiosity and Moral Awareness

The literature on ethics currently recommends more research on the emotional underpinnings of ethical decision-making. The current study takes up the challenge, addressing this research gap by theorising and empirically testing, through four studies (with different methodologies, e.g., survey design, lab experiment), the link between envy—malicious versus benign—and beliefs in unethical consumer behaviour as moderated by religiosity. We show that while malicious envy enhances different types of unethical consumer beliefs, this effect is dampened by the presence versus absence of religiosity (when religiosity was both measured and manipulated through thoughts of God priming). We also show that moral awareness mediates this effect. The findings contribute to theory and practice.