Consumerism and ethical attitudes: an empirical study

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate consumerism and consumer ethics and the relationship between the two concepts. Design/methodology/approach – About 500 questionnaires are distributed to students at two universities in the United Arab Emirates. Frequency distribution and one-way multivariate analysis are used to analyze the data. Two scales are used: consumerism and consumer ethics. Findings – The results of a reliability test and correlation analysis indicated that both scales are reliable and that the consumerism scale is positively and significantly correlated with the consumer ethics scale. Furthermore, the paper reveals that participants scored moderately high on both scales. Originality/value – Unlike most of the existing literature, it is found that the tendency to spend and enjoy buying does not translate into a low score on consumer ethics. In fact, there is a positive correlation between consumerism and consumer ethics scales. This may indicate that religion does play a role in shaping consumers' orientations and attitudes.