Virtue Ethics-Based Sustainable Marketing: How Biospheric Values and Ascription of Responsibility Shape Consumer Sentiment Toward Marketing

Marketing remains grounded in utilitarian principles, leading to criticism that even sustainable marketing may inadequately address ecological crises. Responding to calls to incorporate virtue ethics—which emphasizes the cultivation of moral character—into marketing strategy, this study operationalizes and empirically examines virtue ethics–based sustainable marketing within the 4 P marketing mix. Drawing on value–belief–norm theory, this research examines the moral pathway through which consumers’ biospheric, altruistic, and egoistic value orientations are associated with environmental beliefs and consumer sentiment toward virtue ethics–based sustainable marketing (CSVSM). This study extends value–belief–norm theory from explaining consumers’ direct pro-environmental behaviors to explaining how consumers evaluate what firms should do in their marketing strategies. Structural equation modeling using data from 1,000 participants indicates that biospheric values most strongly predict favorable CSVSM, followed by altruistic values, whereas egoistic values show no significant relationship with environmental beliefs or CSVSM. These relationships are mediated more strongly by ascription of responsibility than by awareness of environmental consequences. The findings suggest that support for fundamentally different sustainable marketing is driven mainly by ecosystem-centered moral values and responsibility attribution, rather than by self-interested values or mere awareness of environmental problems.