Consumer existentialist disengagement: a Kierkegaardian perspective on unethical consumption

Purpose – This paper aims to ask why morally aware consumers still act unethically. It introduces Consumer Existentialist Disengagement (CED) – a pre-behavioral “failure-to-start” in ethical decision-making occurring between moral awareness and moral judgment – to explain non-initiation in moralized choice contexts where consumers retain discretionary agency. Design/methodology/approach – This study draws on Kierkegaard’s Either/Or to show how the esthetic mode (immediacy, commitment-avoidance) produces failure-to-start, whereas the ethical mode entails repeated moral action and sustained responsibility. It integrates this existential lens with dual-process accounts, maps the upstream gap where ethical action fails to begin, and derives propositions linking CED to antecedents and sustainers. Findings – CED is an existential, pre-behavioral non-initiation triggered by immediacy-seeking and hedonic self-gratification and maintained by post hoc rationalizations. Ethical consumption is a tension-laden process of becoming, which requires ethical engagement and commitment practiced over time, not isolated one-off choices. Research limitations/implications – This study specifies an operational agenda to test CED: define constructs and indicators, model the pathway from moral engagement to commitment and initiation, state boundary conditions (moralized choices with discretionary agency), and connect non-initiation to downstream post hoc justification. Practical implications – To overcome CED, managers should intervene before purchase: make initiation easy through precommitment mechanisms and ethical defaults, make consequences salient with clear impact displays, or sustain engagement with continuity cues and public accountability. These design choices temper immediacy-seeking, reduce reliance on post hoc rationalizations, and help consumers persist in ethical decision-making. Originality/value – This study integrates Kierkegaardian existentialism into consumer ethics, distinguish CED from moral disengagement, and reframe the attitude–behavior gap as a problem of moral agency. The account complements utilitarian/deontological, virtue-ethical and dual-process perspectives, and models failure-to-start through testable propositions.