Purpose

Consumers support local businesses as an ethical choice. However, consumer ethics researchers have not paid much attention to local consumption, limiting the understanding of why consumers believe local consumption is ethical. To address this research gap, this study aims to develop and test the theoretical model for local consumption decisions by integrating moral foundations theory and local–global identity literature.

Design/methodology/approach

An online survey of US adult consumers (n = 362) was conducted to test the theoretical model. A correlational structural equation model was used to analyze the data.

Findings

The results confirmed that consumers’ moral obligations to engage in local consumption are driven partially by pro-group moral foundations, and that this identity-based motivation is an intuitive predictor of local consumption behaviors. The findings of this study demonstrate that traditional ethical consumption frameworks that assume knowledge-based decision-making are not enough to explain local consumption, and provide arguments for the need to consider both moral intuitions and moral reasoning.

Originality/value

This study synthesizes two isolated streams of literature and presents an integrated model to holistically explain consumer motivations for local business support. Local consumption was rarely investigated and its unique characteristics were not fully understood in the context of ethical consumption. This study specifically focuses on local consumption, advancing our knowledge of this understudied consumer behavior.