Abstract Moral license derived from the study of social discrimination in the United States, used to explain a moral inconsistency phenomenon that people taking discriminate action or expressing thought did not correspond with what they were permitted to do. Then it gradually expands to the fields of prosocial and consumer behavior. Based on the 54 related literatures during the period 2001 to 2015 in SSCI database, this paper presents the origin and development of moral license theory, including the theoretical basis, and we also discuss several remaining questions about the literature and propose avenues for future research.
