The Role of Social Capital in Boycotting Socially Irresponsible Firms

Boycotts against irresponsible firms showed that socially damaging business practices can be hampered by consumers. However, this mechanism works only if a large number of people join a certain protest. Cross-cultural surveys demonstrate large differences among countries in consumer participation in boycotts of socially irresponsible firms. Although people’s involvement in a protest determines its effectiveness, few studies have addressed cross-country differences in consumer activism. Assuming that a product boycott involves a collective action problem, this study tried to show how a country’s level of social capital influences consumer participation in boycotts. In order to achieve that objective we used data from the sixth edition of the European Social Survey which included 54,221 participants from 29 countries. Following Putnam, social capital was operationalized by trust and social networks. According to our predictions, research findings revealed the positive impact of social capital on boycotting. In countries with high social capital, more than 30% of consumers wanted to control irresponsible firms by boycotting their products, while in countries with low social capital this percentage was only 6.9.