Virtue Theft

Virtue Theft refers to the claiming of total moral credit for the actions of others due to your own influence on those actions. Virtue theft is particularly problematic and evident when it results in Moral Licensing.

An extreme example is as such: "I turned X person vegan, so I get all of the virtue for doing that and it cancels out my choice to resume eating meat."

Virtue theft in and of itself isn't quite as insidious as the Moral Licensing component, but even without the licensing it can result in complacency and have opportunity cost when a moral act is done as a means of obtaining moral credits. For instance, donating money to an effective animal charity that contributes to the development of more Vegan alternatives, or convincing a person to reduce meat consumption, and believing you get complete credit for the improved vegan alternatives and animal suffering spared. This ignores the agency of those you are influencing. Does neither the person working in the charity to develop alternatives nor the person you influenced to eat less meat not get any credit?

The credit for actions such as these doesn't fall on one person, rather the credit is shared. You get the credit for donating your money or spending your time, while the person working in the charity or is influenced by your actions gets credit as well. You of course get credit for the money you donate and the ethical actions you do, but these causal acts on your part only account for part of the total outcome.

This contributes to the negative effects of Moral Licensing, because not only do people already wildly overestimate the good of their positive actions, they get far less "credit" for their actions than they realize. Let's grant that a person donating a dollar to a tree planting charity (which are highly dubious in cost effectiveness and are arguably counterproductive), absorbs 1 tonne of CO2. But the person does not get all the credit for that one tonne, since it's diluted through dozens or even hundreds of other people who made the choice to volunteer for the organization. You have to take into account the person who planted the tree, the people who scouted the area and obtained the proper resources, and the organizers of the charity, just to name a few. One could argue that without that person donating, the tree would not have been planted, but without all the other people on the line, there wouldn't be any charity to give to to begin with.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the message was lost.

For want of a message the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.