Assessing and measuring the impact of self-accountability activation on prosocial choice : can efforts to encourage ethical purchases be counter-productive?

In this report, I discuss one method of prosocial marketing; evaluate it from a theoretical perspective; identify significant questions about its measurement and application; present a study and explain how the design and measurements included in that study could elucidate answers to the identified questions, pending some analysis; and discuss my current data collection plans. The method, ethical self-accountability activation, was proposed and evaluated by John Peloza, Katherine White, and Jingzhi Shang in their article titled "Good and Guilt-Free: The Role of Self-Accountability in Influencing Preferences for Products with Ethical attributes," which was published in the January 2013 issue of the Journal of Marketing.