Research Roundup: February 2025

Dive into our monthly Research Roundup, showcasing the latest insights from the business education community to keep you informed of new and noteworthy industry trends. Here are this month’s selections:

Why Consumers Buy With Their Conscience

• Researchers: Shreyans Goenka, Virginia Tech; Sankar Sen, Baruch College; Manoj Thomas, Cornell University
• Output: “Moral Motives in Consumption,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2025
• Overview: Consumers often consider morality when purchasing, but the motivations behind these decisions are complex. A new study introduces the Three Moral Motives Framework, explaining why people consume ethically. The framework identifies three key motives: moral beneficence, where consumers seek to improve society; moral self, where ethical consumption reinforces a person’s identity; and moral duty, where actions are driven by a sense of obligation rather than personal or societal benefits.
  
  This approach challenges the traditional view that economic self-interest dominates consumer behavior and suggests that moral considerations play a significant role in marketplace choices. By examining these motives, the study clarifies why consumers sometimes prioritize ethical values over price and convenience.
• Findings: The research highlights that these moral motives do not function in isolation—sometimes they reinforce each other, while in other cases they lead to conflicting choices. For instance, a consumer might purchase fair trade coffee due to moral beneficence (helping farmers), moral self (signaling their ethical identity), or moral duty (believing it is simply the right thing to do), or any combination of these motives. The study also finds that contextual factors, such as media exposure or social conditions, can activate certain motives over others.
  
  Furthermore, businesses can influence consumer behavior by framing products around the right moral motive, emphasizing impact for beneficence-driven buyers, self-identity for those with a moral-self motive, and ethical duty for those adhering to moral principles. These insights suggest that businesses must go beyond surface-level ethical branding and deeply understand the underlying moral drivers that shape consumer decisions.

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AI Confidence, Built by Design

• Researchers: Victoria Gonzalez, Laura Amo, and Sanjukta Das Smith, University of Buffalo
• Output: “Building Trust in AI: Exploring the Impact of AI Competence Framing,” Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2025
• Overview: AI is rapidly reshaping workplaces, but trust remains a significant obstacle. Employees are expected to rely on AI-driven insights, yet many remain skeptical about accuracy and reliability. Can the messaging and competence framing around AI shape user trust and error tolerance? This study explores whether presenting AI as highly capable and well-trained increases trust, even when AI makes mistakes.
  
  Researchers conducted an experiment in which participants interacted with AI framed as either highly specialized (strong framing) or generally capable (weak framing) and were then exposed to AI-generated results containing either no, minor, or major errors. As AI plays a growing role in decision-making, understanding how to build and maintain trust is critical for its effective use in organizations.
• Findings: The study found that strong AI framing significantly increased early trust and intent to act, with participants rating trust levels 7 percent higher when AI was presented as highly accurate and specialized. When AI made minor errors, trust remained 15 percent higher for strongly framed AI than weakly framed AI, suggesting that emphasizing competence helps sustain credibility despite minor inaccuracies.
  
  However, major errors reduced trust by 38 percent, and framing did not prevent this decline. Additionally, error tolerance did not improve across conditions, meaning users were not more forgiving of mistakes even if AI had been initially framed as highly competent. These findings suggest that while strategic messaging can enhance AI adoption, organizations must prioritize minimizing major errors, as trust lost due to significant inaccuracies is difficult to regain.

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Structure Matters More Than Security

• Researchers: Julia van de Sandt and Elise Chandon Ince, University of South Carolina; Matthew S. Isaac, Seattle University; Aaron R. Brough, Utah State University; Rajesh Bagchi, Virginia Tech
• Output: “The Organized Ask: How Categorizing Data Requests Affects Consumers’ Willingness to Disclose Information,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2024
• Overview: Consumers often hesitate to share personal data online, yet companies depend on this information to tailor services and refine marketing strategies. Traditional methods of encouraging disclosure, such as emphasizing security measures or offering personalized benefits, can sometimes heighten skepticism instead of trust.
  
  This study explores a subtle yet effective alternative: structuring data requests into categories. Instead of presenting a long, unstructured list of requested information, firms can organize these requests into clearly defined sections—such as Profile Information (name, age, gender), Contact Details (email, phone number), and Payment Information (billing address, credit card number)—to create a sense of order and professionalism.
  
  The researchers investigated whether this structured presentation would make companies seem more trustworthy and, in turn, increase consumers’ willingness to disclose personal information, even when the category labels themselves lacked meaning.
• Findings: Categorizing data requests powerfully influenced disclosure behavior. In one study, participants presented with categorized requests shared 7.5 data points on average, compared to 5.5 in the uncategorized condition—a 36 percent increase. Another experiment showed that categorization raised perceived security by 20 percent, suggesting that the structured format made firms appear more competent and trustworthy.
  
  Importantly, this effect held even when the category labels were generic or arbitrary, indicating that the act of categorization itself—not the specific wording—was driving the change. While this finding offers companies a practical way to improve data collection, it raises ethical concerns. If consumers disclose more information based on presentation rather than actual security improvements, firms must consider how they balance user perception with genuine protections.

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The Behavioral Blueprint for Retirement Saving

• Researchers: Trond Døskeland, Jareef Bin Martuza, Lars Jacob Tynes Pedersen, Francisco Santos, Hallgeir Sjåstad, and Helge Thorbjørnsen, NHH Norwegian School of Economics
• Output: “The Role of Social Norms in Retirement Saving: Evidence From Two Natural Field Experiments,” Journal of Business Research, 2025
• Overview: Retirement savings often fall short because individuals struggle with self-discipline and clarity on how much they should save. To address this, researchers from the NHH Norwegian School of Economics explored whether social norms—what others do or should do—can nudge people to save more for retirement.
  
  Using two large-scale field experiments involving over 679,000 Norwegian bank customers, the researchers tested the impact of two social norms: descriptive norms (how much others save) and injunctive norms (how much people should save). The first study assessed which type of norm drives actual saving behavior, while the second study investigated whether framing norms around the present or the future makes a difference. Both experiments were embedded in real online banking experiences, providing practical insights into consumer behavior.
• Findings: The research revealed distinct effects depending on the type and timing of the social norm. In the first experiment, with 455,509 bank customers, descriptive norms increased actual retirement savings by 14 percent, outperforming injunctive norms. Users clicked on retirement savings banners 50 percent more often when shown injunctive norms, but they saved less, likely because the suggested amounts felt unattainable.
  
  In the second experiment, with 224,000 customers, present-focused descriptive norms (emphasizing current saving behaviors) outperformed future-focused messages, increasing retirement savings sign-ups by 28 percent. Present-focused descriptive norms outperformed future-focused messages, but only in the “save more today” plan, not in the “save more tomorrow” plan.
  
  The results imply that, when promoting financial behaviors, business leaders should align messaging strategies with decision stages. Attention-grabbing messages, highlighting injunctive norms, are more effective for driving engagement, while relatable peer comparisons, leveraging descriptive norms, encourage real behavior change.

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Success Beyond the Marketplace

• Researchers: Francesca Albino, Generali Investments; Jonathan Doh, Villanova University; Paola Garrone and Lucia Piscitello, Politecnico di Milano
• Output: “Non-Market Strategies and Firms’ Organizational Performance: Evidence From the Energy Sector in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Journal of Business Research, 2025
• Overview: In politically unpredictable markets, companies compete not only for product and service sales but also for influence and legitimacy. This is especially true for firms investing in electricity infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa, where political uncertainty and regulatory challenges can significantly impact success. This study examines how companies use non-market strategies (NMS) to improve performance.
  
  Specifically, it looks at corporate political activity (CPA), which includes lobbying and forming government partnerships, and corporate social responsibility (CSR), which involves community engagement and environmental initiatives. By analyzing 104 electricity projects from 2000 to 2014, the researchers aimed to discover which combinations of these strategies led to better financial results and improved access to local resources.
• Findings: The study found that neither CPA nor CSR alone is enough to achieve high performance. However, using both strategies together leads to significantly better financial outcomes and easier resource access, especially in politically unstable countries. Companies that combined CPA and CSR saw higher economic performance in 83 percent of cases when operating in unstable political environments.
  
  In contrast, businesses that ignored CPA in politically stable countries experienced lower performance in 75 percent of cases, highlighting the importance of political engagement. Additionally, access to resources was strongly linked to CSR. Firms that did not invest in social responsibility struggled to secure local resources in 82 percent of cases, regardless of political conditions. These results suggest that to succeed in challenging markets, companies should integrate political influence with community engagement, ensuring both financial gains and long-term stability.

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If you have new research from your school share with the business education community, please submit a summary and relevant links to AACSB Insights via our online submission form at aacsb.edu/insights/articles/submissions.