Does Adolescent Popularity Mediate Relationships between Both Theory of Mind and Love of Money and Consumer Ethics?

We develop a dual‐impact theory, treat popularity (peer nominations) as a common mediator between both theory of mind and love of money and consumer ethics (deceptive/misleading/harmful shopping practices). We theorise our direct and indirect paths as follows: Directly, love of money is more strongly related to consumer unethical beliefs than theory of mind. Indirectly, theory of mind attracts popularity that fuels consumer unethical beliefs. Our data from multiple sources (survey of 769 French teenagers and peer nominations of popularity) support our theory. Multi‐group analyses across gender, age, school, and money reveal new discoveries: Theory of mind directly excites consumer unethical beliefs for teens with money from work only. Love of money is related to consumer unethical beliefs—much stronger for senior high school (HS) students than for junior HS teens and much stronger for males than for females. Without money (from work and from parents), teenagers with high theory of mind become popular, but have no consumer unethical beliefs. Theory of mind is not related to girls' popularity, but popular girls have consumer unethical beliefs. Our alarming insights illustrate: Increasing work experience and age induces consumer unethical beliefs. Our theory provides implications for retail managers and to the fields of behavioural economics, monetary intelligence, and business ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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