Journal of Consumer Affairs最新文献

Monroe P. (“Monty”) Friedman passed away peacefully in the presence of his family on October 2, 2020. Monty was one of the most creative thinkers and prolific scholars to grace the field of consumer research, yet because his academic home was in a department with neither colleagues nor graduate students studying consumer topics, his passing went largely unnoticed within the ACCI community. Monty last attended an ACCI annual conference in 2016 and last published an article in the Journal of Consumer Affairs in 2005, so many younger readers of this journal may not be familiar with Monty or his work. There are several reasons, though, to read on.

First, Monty was a pillar of ACCI. He held the organization's most important positions and received its most prestigious honors. Monty was a member of ACCI's board of directors and ACCI president during 1989–1990. Most notably, Monty was JCA's editor from 1980 until 1984. I recall submitting an article to JCA during that period and, as an untenured assistant professor, was very happy when it was accepted for publication after some revisions. Before the article was sent for typesetting, Monty sent the manuscript to me covered in red markings. He had taken the time to edit my article in detail for grammar and grace of style, down to the last comma. I imagine he took similar care of other authors, probably because Monty wanted JCA to be perfect.

Monty loved contributing his own work to JCA, publishing at least a dozen articles in its pages over the course of four decades, pausing only due to professional probity during his years as JCA editor. Monty was also a fixture at ACCI annual conferences. I always looked forward to attending his sessions, knowing that I would hear innovative papers on cutting-edge topics. For his many contributions to ACCI, Monty was awarded the rank of Distinguished Fellow in 1991. (He was also a Fellow of the American Psychological Association.)

Second, Monty was a model of intellectual daring. His career started conventionally enough. In 1959, at the tender age of 25, he earned a PhD in psychology from the University of Tennessee. Being interested in perception and learning, he conducted an experiment on “olfactory sensitivity.”

Note that policy-relevant consumer research and the modern consumer movement barely existed in 1959. That year, Ralph Nader was just finishing law school, and the publication of his book Unsafe at Any Speed was still 6 years in the future. U.S. President John F. Kennedy's message to Congress on consumer rights was still 3 years away. In 1959, the only big consumer news was a recall by the Food and Drug Administration of a batch of cranberries 3 weeks before Thanksgiving.

During the 1960s, as the modern consumer movement and the problems it highlighted gained visibility, Monty took his first intellectual leap of faith. He became one of the few (perhaps only) applied psychologists

Vaccine hesitancy is increasing and messaging highlighting the speed of vaccine development may prompt vaccine hesitancy for those concerned about safety and efficacy of new vaccines. We employ a mixed methods approach to address a gap in the literature regarding how consumers process information about the pace of vaccine development. In an experiment, we manipulated message content about pace of development for the COVID-19 vaccine and measured need for cognition. In a qualitative study, participants answered parallel questions to the experiment and additional open-ended questions. We find that vaccine hesitant individuals are more willing to accept a vaccine when information matches their processing style. Further, individuals may process messages affectively or cognitively, even when the material presented is factual and scientific, and engage in high or low elaboration. We recommend that practitioners discuss the safety and effectiveness of new treatments in an interactive fashion, in order to better match the message to the recipient's processing preferences.

This study offers interdisciplinary theoretical discussion connecting consumer behavior, values, self-regulation, self-determination, and religiosity concepts, and develops a conceptual model of the effects of consumer religiosity on compulsive buying. Complex sequential mediational mechanisms are investigated, involving the effects of unique religiosity facets on compulsive buying through materialistic values and hedonistic shopping values. Results show that intrinsic religiosity is negatively related with materialistic and hedonistic shopping values and compulsive buying, while the social extrinsic religiosity and personal extrinsic religiosity are positively related with these consumer values and the resulting compulsive buying. Compared with prior research, this study examines the three religiosity facets separately. This work also identifies the moderating role of gender, with all facets of religiosity exhibiting stronger relationships for women as compared with men. Theoretical and practical implications for consumers, policy makers, and marketers focus on the importance of maintenance of intrinsic religiosity orientation in personal life.

This study explores the impact of COVID-19-related job loss on early retirement withdrawals, highlighting the roles of financial hardships, subjective well-being, financial knowledge, and emergency savings. Drawing from 2929 respondents, the research identified that job loss increases early withdrawals, both directly and through financial hardships and well-being perceptions. Notably, individuals with greater financial knowledge and at least 3 months of emergency savings experience less negative impact from job loss. Our findings emphasize the vital role of employers in offering workplace financial education and promoting emergency savings. This aligns with the SECURE 2.0 Act's strategies and underlines the significance of financial readiness in buffering against the economic fallout of unexpected events like the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this study, we partnered with a large credit union to conduct a 10-arm field experiment aimed at reducing delinquent payments on installment debts. This experiment tested common behavioral interventions such as payment reminders against more novel approaches such as magnet reminders and savings accounts that automated emergency savings. It also tested the impact of offering financial counseling services. Our findings indicate that the email reminders—which emphasized resolving current delinquencies in some treatments and preventing future delinquencies in others—were effective at reducing moderate and severe payment delinquency rates. Other, more intensive treatments, which required participants to enroll in a new account or financial counseling, likely did not have an impact due to low takeup rates. We also find limited evidence that certain interventions were more effective for individuals with higher credit risk.

Scientific evidence has been building up about the potentially negative effects of pesticides on human health. Fruit and vegetables have a higher percentage of samples with pesticide residues exceeding tolerance levels than any other food item. However, no regulations exist that require point-of-purchase labeling to inform consumers of the use of pesticides during cultivation. Based on a nationally representative sample of the French population, this study examined the impact of labeling designed to provide information about pesticide use during fruit and vegetable cultivation at the point of purchase. The results suggest that information on pesticides has a strong impact on consumers' purchase intention and product choice, and that a large majority of participants support the proposal to display mandatory information about pesticide use through labeling at the point of purchase. We conclude with a discussion of the public policy implications of our findings.

We examine a bottom-up approach to consumer and marketing education for subsistence consumers, that is, those with low income and relatively lower literacy levels. They face a variety of cognitive and other constraints, with difficulty in abstract thinking being a central issue that is critical for effective decision-making. We study the impact of marketplace literacy education, with its unique bottom-up approach, on abstract thinking in the consumer domain. We test the effectiveness of a bottom-up educational approach, which covers concrete examples before abstract concepts, compared to the reverse sequence of a top-down approach. We find that the bottom-up approach in marketplace literacy education leads to more abstract thinking in the consumer domain compared to a top-down approach. We discuss the implications of this research for consumer affairs.

In a consumer society, collective consumption is key to maintaining sociality. However, violence among consumers not only thwarts the benefits of participating in consumer collectives, but also reduces sociality and causes various types of harm. In this study, we investigate the League of Legends gaming community to examine interconsumer violence targeting female gamers and how the mistreatment they experience alters the benefits they derive from being part of the collective. Our exploratory study, based on consumer interviews and auto-ethnographic findings, contributes to the literature on consumer collectives, consumer culture, and gender marketing. Specifically, our data highlight three categories of benefits altered by interconsumer violence—utilitarian, social, and symbolic—each composed of related subcategories. We explain how these benefits are altered by interconsumer violence. We also offer practical recommendations for consumers, community managers, and policymakers to address this phenomenon.

This paper is concerned with the relationship between financial socialization and financial understanding among young children. Measures of financial understanding, appropriate for 4–6 year olds, are developed. Regression analysis is used to relate these measures statistically to a set of financial socialization variables and control variables related to the child, their parents, and their household. Data collected in the nationally representative child and parent 2016 UK Children and Young People's Financial Capability Survey are used. A key empirical finding is that financial understanding is about 10% higher for children whose parents regularly discuss with their children how they spend their money. The analysis suggests that around 20% of parents do not discuss financial matters with their children. It is likely that variation in early-life financial socialization is important in explaining variation in later-life financial understanding. Further research is needed to establish if this relationship is causal.

Financial education represents a powerful tool for improving economic literacy of citizens. This paper presents results from an experiment providing a group of 136 workers in an Italian university (administrative staff) an online, synchronous course. Classes were organized in 5 sessions of 2h each and covered basic topics about personal finance. The effectiveness of the course is assessed through a rigorous randomized controlled trial (RCT). In addition to the analysis of improvements in financial knowledge, financial self-efficacy and the role of prior attitudes and behaviors were explored. Participants obtained post-test scores statistically higher than individuals in the control group, with an average effect size of 0.55 SD. The effect is particularly relevant for participants starting with low levels of financial knowledge. Moreover, two novel findings emerge: financial self-efficacy increases (0.51 SD) after the course, and pre-treatment individuals' financial attitudes and behaviors shed further light on the financial learning process.