Egregiousness and Boycott Intensity: Evidence from the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Wang, Zhongmin; Lee, Alvin; Polonsky, Michael
• 署名单位: Resources for the Future; Deakin University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2016.2577
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 149-163
• 关键词: egregiousness; boycott; BP oil spill; environmentalism

摘要

Consumer boycotts are triggered by egregious events, but the literature has not distinguished the level of egregiousness from consumers' preferences or disutility associated with a given level of egregiousness, nor has the literature studied how these two components of egregiousness affect boycott intensity. We provide a model of market-level boycotts that distinguishes the two egregiousness components. Consistent with the predictions of our model, the market-level intensity of consumer boycotting of BP-branded gasoline, which was triggered by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, increased with the spill's egregiousness level, approximated by the officially reported daily amount of oil leaked into the ocean and by other measures (i.e., the duration of the spill and the intensity of media coverage), and with consumers' disutility from egregiousness, approximated by an area's environmentalism and its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico.