CAN WE EMPLOY MORALLY CONGRUENT NEGATIVE EMOTIONS IN MARKETING MESSAGES TO INCREASE CONSUMPTION OF FOOD PRODUCTS WITH SUSTAINABLE CERTIFICATIONS?
Food Certifications seek to promote different moral objectives. Certifications like Fair Trade seek to promote fairness objectives and certifications like Non-GMO seek to promote purity objectives. Moreover, consumption of food items with these types of certifications has been tied to prosocial attitudes and behaviors. Organizations that seek to promote prosocial behaviors in the context of food certifications can utilize negative emotions in their campaigns. The questions that arise are- which negative emotion would work the best to promote different food certifications and would any negative emotion be equally effective in promoting food certifications that promote different moral objectives? In this study, we hypothesize that the congruence between the moral domain of a negative emotion and the moral objective of a food certification can be utilized to promote consumption of said food certification. Organizations seeking to promote Fair-Trade certifications should use anger in their campaigns while organizations seeking to promote Non-GMO certifications should use disgust in their campaigns. Two experiments demonstrated that the moral congruence between the moral domain of the emotion and the moral objective of the food certification did indeed increase preference for that certification and also increased Willingness to Pay for said certification to some extent, demonstrating the importance of moral congruence in consumption practices.