Abstract

While the COVID-19 pandemic has put thousands of food establishments out of business, the market of food delivery applications (FDAs) has spiked. FDAs have been criticized for their inadequate compensation of workers and fee structure for partner restaurants. It is expected that consumers compensate for the low driver pays with their tips, which is an act of responsibilization. This qualitative study of interviews and archival data will investigate the responsibilization journey of consumers in using FDAs service and how emotions arise from or shape their consumption. My findings show that consumers either refuse to take the responsibility or become responsibilized for the issues faced by food delivery drivers and restaurants. They experience a wide range of emotions arising from the burden of responsibilization, hence taking different actions to resolve these feelings. While the literature on responsibilization usually presumes that consumers will be responsibilized, my findings add another perspective where consumers refuse to be responsibilized, rejecting the perceived unfair shift of responsibility. My findings also demonstrate that consumers can feel responsibilized for more than one issue within the same context. The findings also affirm that emotions can contribute to the formation of responsible subjects as well as the shaping of anti-consumption, thus adding a complex understanding to the literature of emotions and consumer responsibilization. For practitioners, the study emphasizes the importance of being socially responsible and advises companies to adjust their structures to be beneficial for all stakeholders.