What's the Cost of Following Your Conscience?

You hear it from many shoppers. They want businesses to behave, to be environmentally friendly and to be rock-solid world citizens. They'll even spend more money on those companies, if that's what it takes.

According to a 2014 Nielsen survey of 30,000 consumers in 60 countries, 55 percent of global online consumers say they're willing to pay more for products and services from companies that strive to be socially and environmentally responsible.

"We, as humans, have an inherent wish to do good, and when we do, we feel good, and that feeling is often stronger than the wish to buy at the lowest price," says Per Sjofors, CEO of Atenga Inc., a pricing research and advisory firm in Woodland Hills, California.

But how much more are you willing to pay? And more importantly, so your bank account doesn't go bad while you try to do good, what should you be thinking about if you want to be an ethical consumer? At least three things.

Do your research. Many companies claim they're responsible corporations, but you're probably better off not taking their word for it. Fortunately, just as there are plenty of websites and apps to help consumers find the best price, some sites and apps help consumers find the best ethical brands as well.

For instance, Buycott.com offers an app that enables you to scan a product's bar code with your phone and pull up information on the brand. There's no guarantee, of course, that Buycott's database will contain the brand, but assuming it does, the information it returns should give you a sense of whether you should buy the item or shelve it.

Sarah Farver, a public relations specialist in Boyd, Texas, says she uses an app from GoodGuide.com, which rates and reviews products on factors like safety and environmental friendliness. She also likes the website Free2Work.org, which raises awareness of companies' track records with issues like child labor laws.

It's an interesting site, and Farver says she became interested in knowing if companies are profiting from mistreating employees after doing some volunteer work with refugees.

"One family who I have come to love and care about has three high school daughters," Farver says. "They told me their story of fleeing Burma by boat and how they ended up in Myanmar for two years. The kids worked in factories six days a week, 10 hours a day. For me to put a face to who manufactures some of our goods hit home. I don't want to feed the problem by sending my dollars to fuel that fire."

Identify the causes you believe in the most. Following your principles can get really costly, and if you're going to adopt new purchasing routines regularly, you'll want to leave some extra padding in your budget. If you don't have an abundance of income, you may want to choose your battles carefully, or at least decide how much you're willing to spend to purchase with a clear conscience.

For instance, Shel Horowitz, a Hadley, Massachusetts-based business guru who specializes in environmentally friendly practices and blogs at GreenandProfitable.com, says he's typically willing to spend a 15 percent premium to shop ethically on small items, like an article of clothing or food, while he'll spend $50 to $100 more on a bigger-ticket item, like a computer, if he knows the company behind it is trying to do the right thing.

If something he wants to buy comes from a high-principled company but the cost is higher than his self-imposed budgetary rules, Horowitz says, "I will determine if I can live without the item, or if the conditions under which it's produced are tolerable, and decide individually."

He also has a long-standing rule that if he can, he'll support local businesses in his community before the national brand-name ones.

For instance, Horowitz says he once special-ordered a book for $50 from an independent local bookstore, "even though it was a full $18 cheaper online," he says. He didn't go the cheaper route because he knew this particular store owner was "going through a rough patch" and felt her store was important to the community.

Prepare for sticker shock. If you aren't prepared, you may quickly become disillusioned with patronizing companies that share your values. If you do know what you're in for and can accept it, you may end up having a lot in common with Danielle Sabrina.

Sabrina, a business speaker and consultant in Manchester, New Hampshire, is a vegetarian, but one of her two teenage daughters is a meat eater. Sabrina hates the idea of buying meat, but if she is going to, she wants to make sure that the animal killed for food was treated in the most humane manner possible.

And for her, that's a costly endeavor. Sabrina says, "Purchasing a local, grass-fed steak can cost up to $40 a pound."

Because of that, she tries to keep her steak buying to no more than three times a month. She buys chicken once or twice a week and sandwich meat a couple of times a month, and she makes sure all of it is organic and came from animals that have been treated humanely.

"What really kills my budget is not only finding and sourcing that meat -- sometimes I have to drive a ways to get it -- but that I'm creating two different meals a little more than half the time," Sabrina says.

Plus, she adds, making organic vegetarian meals isn't cheap.

And that's the thing. Buying products and services that go above and beyond what a company's peers are doing isn't cheap. Marcos Sanchez, a San Francisco-based executive at Runa Capital, a global venture capital firm, says he sometimes will pay as much as 30 to 50 percent more for food that meets his standards.

But now that he's a dad who is concerned about how negative environmental changes will affect his children, Sanchez says he's on overdrive when it comes to thinking about how to be a responsible consumer. He is spending more to buy items like fair-trade coffee (which guarantees coffee bean farmers a fair price for their crops), and he buys things for his house like furniture made from recycled wood.

"I do think we need to be more conscious of getting greener items and not just the cheapest product that's coming out of Wal-Mart," he says.

But, of course, not everyone can afford to have a clear conscience when it comes to their purchases. Still, for those who can, they're arguably making it more mainstream and possibly easier for more companies to adopt responsible practices.

"Personally, I'm apt to spend more and feel OK about it if I know I'm buying from a company that is trying to make this world a better place," says Amanda Pennington, a public relations specialist in Costa Mesa, California. "There are so many things leading to the degradation of our planet [and] its people, animals, and land and water that it only makes sense to support companies who are trying to do just a little bit to combat that."

She adds, "If I do it, and I tell someone else about it, then we have two people supporting these companies. One person with a small amount of purchasing power can actually make a difference."