Mobile Applications for Ethical Consumption - Metrics and Frameworks

摘要

Mobile smartphone applications are becoming available in the service of ethical consumption. Ethical consumption occurs when consumers are empowered with sufficient information about firm behavior to make their purchases in consonance with their own ethics. Such tools vary in the transparency of the data they rely on to deliver ethical information to users, from those based on rich, complex but proprietary data sets, to those based on parsimonious but transparent, public-domain data sets. This paper presents a theoretical framework for understanding the potential impacts of these differences, and provides an example of what the metrics in a transparent, public-domain data set might look like. Such applications have the potential to substantially increase the role of the public in supporting ecology and social justice.