Daily Archives: April 6, 2022

Modern Slavery and Plastic Straws

Slavery has had a significant impact on the environment throughout history. Despite this, links between modern slavery and environmental destruction have received limited attention. Rather, modern slavery and environment exist in distinct, albeit well-established realms. Such distinction and lack of interconnectivity are arguably unhelpful in seeking to mobilise positive action in the fight against slavery. In sharing our research on consumer perspectives of modern slavery, a question often asked has been; if consumers can get behind rejection of plastic straws why not modern slavery?

Why Most Consumers Do Not Walk Their Talk? Neutralising and Legitimising Modern Day Slavery

In our previous blog we emphasized that if consumers are to play a key role in the fight against modern day slavery, they firstly need to be aware of its scale and nature and secondly, recognize slavery as a morally significant issue. Although this sounds to a certain extent achievable – through appropriately tailored communication and public awareness programmes – we know from previous research that this may still not translate into positive consumer action. The so called “attitude-behaviour” gap (refers to circumstances in which consumers say one thing (e.g. that they care about the environment) but do another (e.g. systematically engaging in environmentally unsustainable behavior). How do we begin to explain this, let alone change it? One key approach that has been previously proposed in consumer research is to explore the excuses or justifications consumers use to normalize inaction even when recognizing its moral severity.