Product boycotts are a common feature of our political lives. Vegans avoid animal products, and many Americans boycott Tesla for political reasons. Boycotts are a central mechanism through which consumers attempt to hold firms morally accountable within market systems. Consequentialists defend consumer boycotts on the basis of their expected effects. Non-consequentialists, by contrast, defend boycotts on grounds such as non-complacency, the expression of disapproval and public solidarity, or their role as instruments of democratic values. I reject these defences and provide a novel non-consequentialist framework to evaluate the moral goodness of consumer boycotts. I argue that the moral significance of product boycotts does not depend on their causal efficacy but on their expressive role in reflecting consumers’ moral concerns. Consumer boycotts are actions through which agents manifest what they care about and what they take to be morally important. When such actions express morally admirable concerns — for instance, concern for animal welfare or justice — they reflect well on the consumer’s moral concerns; when they express morally objectionable concerns, they reflect poorly. Consequently, even causally inefficacious boycotts can be morally meaningful, not as instruments of change, but as expressions of moral commitments that contribute to making us morally better persons.
