Green Consumption Orientation and Purchase Intentions Toward Other Ethical Products: The Mediating Roles of Warm Glow and Moral Self-Regulation

Abstract

An important question in sustainable consumption research is whether consumers’ green consumption orientation (GCO) extends beyond environmentally focused choices and relates to their willingness to purchase other types of ethical products, including those associated with fair trade, labor rights, animal welfare, and corporate social responsibility. Drawing on research on cross-domain ethical consumption and moral self-regulation, this study examines a cross-sectional associative model in which GCO is linked to purchase intentions toward other ethical products through three psychological mechanisms: warm glow, compensatory moral licensing (MLP-C), and identity-consistency mechanism (ICM). The moderating role of personal moral identity (PMI) is also considered. Data from 598 consumer questionnaires indicated a positive association between GCO and purchase intentions toward other ethical products. Warm glow and ICM were associated with positive indirect effects, whereas MLP-C was associated with a negative indirect effect. PMI further altered these relationships by weakening the association between GCO and MLP-C while strengthening the association between GCO and ICM. The robustness of the ICM pathway was further examined through an item-deletion sensitivity analysis, which continued to support the indirect association after two intention-like items were removed. In addition, an exploratory latent profile analysis identified four consumer profiles within the sample, which are interpreted as hypothesis-generating rather than confirmatory. Taken together, the results suggest that cross-domain ethical consumption intentions may reflect the joint influence of emotional rewards and competing forms of moral self-regulation. Given the cross-sectional and self-reported nature of the data, the findings should be interpreted as cross-domain associations between consumption orientation and purchase intentions rather than as evidence of behavioral spillover or causal effects across consumption domains.