In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of some thing or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live (normative ethics), or to describe the significance of different actions. Value systems are proscriptive and prescriptive beliefs; they affect the ethical behavior of a person or are the basis of their intentional activities. Often primary values are strong and secondary values are suitable for changes. What makes an action valuable may in turn depend on the ethical values of the objects it increases, decreases, or alters. An object with "ethic value" may be termed an "ethic or philosophic good" (noun sense).

Values can be defined as broad preferences concerning appropriate courses of actions or outcomes. As such, values reflect a person's sense of right and wrong or what "ought" to be. "Equal rights for all", "Excellence deserves admiration", and "People should be treated with respect and dignity" are representatives of values. Values tend to influence attitudes and behavior and these types include moral values, doctrinal or ideological values, social values, and aesthetic values. It is debated whether some values that are not clearly physiologically determined, such as altruism, are intrinsic, and whether some, such as acquisitiveness, should be classified as vices or virtues.

Value may be regarded as a study under ethics, which, in turn, may be grouped as philosophy. Similarly, ethical value may be regarded as a subgroup of a broader field referred to as axiology. Ethical value denotes something's degree of importance, with the aim of determining what action or life is best to do, or at least attempt to describe the value of different actions.

In value theory, the study of ethical value includes the use of other disciplines, such as: anthropology, behavioral economics, business ethics, corporate governance, moral philosophy, political sciences, social psychology, sociology and theology.

Ethical value is sometimes used synonymously with goodness. However, "goodness" has many other meanings and may be regarded as more ambiguous.

Social value is a concept used in the public sector and in philanthropic contexts to cover the net social, environmental and economic benefits of individual and collective actions for which the concepts of economic value or profit are inadequate. For example, UK public procurement legislation refers to "social value" in its requirement that public bodies commissioning public services take account of the social, environmental and economic well-being of the area where a contract will be delivered: see Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012. Local authorities have adopted "social value" policies which facilitate a fair and consistent approach to implementing this duty: for example, Cornwall Council's Social Value policy notes that "bringing consistency in performance and our outcomes will mean that the process for defining social value will be standardised". In regard to central government procurement, the "Social Value Model" aims to ensure that comparable benefits are secured through procurement, and the Welsh government refers to "social value requirements" and "social value clauses" in its own public procurement guidance. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation refers to "social value creation" as a quantifiable objective in public policy and philanthropic decision-making.

Personal values exist in relation to cultural values, either in agreement with or divergence from prevailing norms. A culture is a social system that shares a set of common values, in which such values permit social expectations and collective understandings of the good, beautiful and constructive. Without normative personal values, there would be no cultural reference against which to measure the virtue of individual values and so cultural identity would disintegrate.

Relative values differ between people, and on a larger scale, between people of different cultures. On the other hand, there are theories of the existence of absolute values, which can also be termed noumenal values (and not to be confused with mathematical absolute value). An absolute value can be described as philosophically absolute and independent of individual and cultural views, as well as independent of whether it is known or apprehended or not. Ludwig Wittgenstein was pessimistic about the idea that an elucidation would ever happen regarding the absolute values of actions or objects; "we can speak as much as we want about "life" and "its meaning", and believe that what we say is important. But these are no more than expressions and can never be facts, resulting from a tendency of the mind and not the heart or the will".