At The Intersection: The Role of Attitude and Intent in Ethical Decision Making of Advertising Practitioner in Digital Age

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the ethical decision making of the advertising practitioners in the digital age. It focuses on the advertising practitioners’ attitude toward ethical problems in the digital age, especially the factors that influence ethical behavioral intentions of advertising practitioners. The respondents are Thai advertising practitioners. A self-administered questionnaire is used in data collection. Totally, 305 usable questionnaires were returned. The Path analysis via regression is used to test the hypotheses. In this study, scenario is employed as an important instrument. There are 6 scenarios reflecting ethics of advertising in digital age : in term of credibility of advertisememt (Scenario 1-3) and violation of consumers’privacy (Scenario 4-6). The participants have equally overall attitude toward these issues at the level of neutral to poor. The study finds that in terms of advertising practitioners’ attitude, subjective norm and behavior intention to the ethical problems of digital-age advertisement, Scenario 5 Search Engine Company (neutral) is the story that the participants had the best attitude toward and had behavioral intention toward this the most; whereas subjective norm shows slightly different result. They perceive that the influencers are least opposed to Scenario 2 Photo for ads (neutral). Scenario 1 Hit the Votes is the story that they have worst attitude in poor level and have behavioral intention not to do this the most in the unlikely level. However, Scenario 1 still is the story that the practitioners do not accept the most and they believed that their subjective norm opposed this story the most as well. In terms of participants’ communication climate in the organization is in the level of fair to somewhat good. The dimension of communication with supervisor has highest mean. Furthermore, when the participants face the ethical problems of advertisement, people at work are more important than those at home or outside the office and the immediate supervisor is the most important reference group for most of participants to advise when they encounter the ethical problem. From the hypotheses testing, attitude is the variable that has the most significant influence on behavior intention. It is also the mediating factor for gender and age that indirectly effects behavior intention. Gender and age are the significant direct effect upon attitude. Male ad practitioners have more positive attitude to the ethical problem in the digital age than females. Younger participants in this study also have more positive attitude than those who are older. Subjective norm has no significant influence on behavior intention, whereas communication climate has significantly low influence on behavior intention.