Journal of Consumer Behaviour最新文献

In an era where digital platforms are reshaping healthcare delivery, we have also seen the rise of online platforms for mental health consumption. While the literature on consumer behaviour in an online context is rich, mental health consumption presents a unique context requiring attention to personal health-related dynamics alongside the larger aspect of online consumption. This motivates the current study to conduct a multi-method study for understanding the phenomenon of online mental health consumption. We combine a systematic review of 105 articles (2014–2024) with topic modelling of 168,040 user reviews from mental health applications. We theorise how the logic of choice and care are at work in online mental health consumption. Our findings reveal a complex and dynamic interplay of ‘choice’-related enablers and ‘care’-related inhibitors, shaping online mental health consumption behaviour. While online platforms offer ‘choice’ for consuming mental health services by overcoming traditional barriers related to stigma and accessibility, their uptake at the same time is challenged by the emerging care-related factors such as trust and privacy concerns. An analysis of user reviews further reveals that consumer experiences focus on the service delivery quality, personalised user interfaces and technical platform reliability, which collectively demonstrate how users navigate between autonomous choice making and professional care expectations. This apparent tension between the ‘logics’ in mental health consumption online also informs the larger online consumption behaviour literature about attending to the constantly evolving, often competing logic in online platforms.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has demonstrated immense application value across various domains owing to its high-quality content generation capabilities. However, avoiding service failures, such as AI hallucinations, remains challenging. Grounded in the dual-process and cognitive appraisal theories of emotions, this study uses event-related potential (ERP) experiments and scenario-based questionnaires as part of a mixed-method approach to investigate the impact of service recovery perspectives (first-person vs. second-person) on users' willingness to forgive. It investigates the moderating effect of service failure severity (minor vs. severe) and the mediating influence of perceived relief. The questionnaire findings reveal that the first-person perspective in service recovery significantly enhances users' perceived relief, thereby increasing their willingness to forgive, especially for severe service failures. The ERP results indicate that first-person service recovery induces larger P2 amplitudes and late positive potential components. This study contributes to the literature on service recovery perspectives and presents a novel research design that integrates subjective observations with objective physiological markers. It provides empirical evidence for designing more effective service recovery strategies for GenAI service providers, promoting the harmonious development of human–computer interactions.

Cognitive load, resulting from the substantial information provided in crowdfunding campaigns, is a critical yet easily overlooked factor. Creators often provide abundant product details to attract backers, but the consequence would turn out to be the opposite. Through two experimental studies simulating reward-based crowdfunding scenarios, the results consistently show that higher cognitive load (manipulated via presentation format) negatively affects investment willingness, with emotional responses acting as a mediator. Unexpectedly, reference points have not shown a significant moderating effect in Study1. Study 2 revealed that the insignificant effect of the reference point was due to the existence of an implicit reference point. By integrating cognitive load and emotional mechanisms, we demonstrate that backers' implicit schemas could effectively buffer the negative effect of cognitive load. Practically, creators should increase the logic and clarity of presentation in order to evoke positive emotions, and achieve a higher success rate of crowdfunding.

Benefiting from advances in artificial intelligence technology, social chatbots account for changing the way human–robots socialize, especially improving their psychological state. This paper aims to not only establish the relationship between loneliness and attachment to social chatbots but also explore the affecting mechanism. The methods of machine learning (Study 1) and experiments (Studies 2 and 3) are used to explore and validate the affecting mechanism. The results demonstrate that loneliness can positively promote users' attachment to social chatbots, and this process is mediated by self-disclosure. Furthermore, it is worth noting that perceived empathy moderates not only the effect of loneliness on self-disclosure but also the effect of loneliness on attachment to social chatbots. This research contributes to understanding human–social chatbot dynamics, providing valuable insights for marketers and firms involved in designing coding programs for enhanced user experiences during interactions with social chatbots.

Despite extensive scholarly efforts to promote green consumption, the marketing communication field has comparatively paid less attention to effective strategies for engaging climate change skeptics in green consumption. This study investigated whether the source or content of messages about climate change would more effectively alter skeptics' beliefs and promote green consumption. In Study 1 (n = 264), we employed Social Identity Theory to examine whether endorsements from Republican figures could influence conservatives, who predominantly exhibit climate change skepticism. The findings indicated no significant impact of in-group endorsement on altering beliefs and promoting green consumption. In Study 2 (n = 134), we applied Inoculation Theory to assess if educating skeptics about the tactics behind climate change skepticism could modify their views. Results demonstrated that inoculation reduced perceived threats associated with climate change skepticism, increasing the likelihood of green consumption. These findings suggest that inoculation messages, rather than endorsements from social in-groups, may offer a more effective strategy for shifting conservative views and encouraging green consumption.

Consumers frequently face trade-offs between immediate indulgence and long-term health. Prior research has largely examined binary health-versus-indulgence choices, leaving unanswered how such conflicts unfold in the more realistic context of mixed food bundles, where healthy and indulgent items co-occur. Moreover, compensatory health beliefs have typically been treated as a unitary construct, obscuring whether compensation fosters healthier actions versus licenses indulgence. A further ambiguity concerns the conflation of goal conflict with perceived health risk, raising questions about whether risk simply intensifies conflict or operates as a distinct boundary condition. This research addresses these gaps across four experiments. Study 1 shows that greater goal conflict predicts healthier bundle choices. Study 2 demonstrates mediation: immediate compensations encourage healthier selections, whereas future compensations justify indulgence. Study 3 manipulates compensatory orientation, providing causal evidence that the temporal framing of compensation alone shifts bundle choices. Study 4 manipulates perceived health risk and reveals moderation: under low risk, conflict strengthens immediate compensations; under high risk, reliance on delayed compensations is suppressed, leading consumers to adopt healthier bundles directly. The findings contribute theoretically by clarifying the temporal dynamics of compensatory reasoning, positioning risk perception as a boundary condition rather than a proxy for conflict, and reconciling prior inconsistencies. Methodologically, the bundle-choice paradigm enhances ecological validity beyond binary designs. Practically, the results offer guidance for public health and marketplace interventions by showing when small, real-time compensations are effective and when stronger risk-based strategies are required to promote balanced eating.

Though anthropomorphism has become a prevalent design strategy in artificial intelligence, scant empirical evidence has examined whether anthropomorphizing recommendation chatbots affects consumers' willingness to disclose personal information. This study therefore explores how chatbot anthropomorphism influences consumers' information-disclosure intention and the psychological mechanisms underlying this relationship. Findings from three experimental studies indicate that heightened chatbot anthropomorphism enhances consumers' information-disclosure intention (Studies 1, 2a, and 2b). This effect is mediated by perceived benefits (Study 1). Importantly, regulatory focus moderates the effect of chatbot anthropomorphism on information-disclosure intention (Studies 2a and 2b): promotion-focused consumers are more willing to disclose personal information when the chatbot anthropomorphism is high (vs. low), whereas prevention-focused consumers remain unaffected by varying levels of anthropomorphism. These findings shed light on how to design effective chatbot interfaces and how to target the right consumers.

With the rapid development of the digital economy, live-streaming marketing has become an important choice for businesses and consumers. Online product presentations are critical for e-commerce platforms to convey information and enhance product impressions. Based on sensory marketing theory, this study employs a questionnaire survey method to explore the impact of different visual perspectives (first-person or third-person) in live streaming on consumer continued viewing and purchase intentions. It further examines the mediating effects of virtual tactility and flow experience, while incorporating product type (functional vs. hedonic) as a moderator. Study 1 indicates that the visual perspective of online product presentations significantly directly affects consumer continued viewing and purchase intentions, with the third-person perspective being more effective in stimulating intentions. Building on this, Study 2 further investigates and validates the mediating roles of virtual tactility and flow experience in this influence process. Multi-angle presentation enables thorough product scrutiny and virtual tactility. When the perspectives match, consumer visual habits enable detailed product scrutiny. This boosts engagement and shopping immersion, triggering flow experience that impacts continued viewing and purchase intentions. Furthermore, Study 3 reveals that the product type moderates the relationship between visual perspective and consumer continued viewing and purchase intentions. In FPP live streaming, functional products elicited a more positive consumer intention than hedonic products. Conversely, in TPP live streaming, hedonic products elicited a more positive consumer intention than functional products. The conclusions of this research provide valuable references for merchants to reasonably design and optimize the visual perspectives of their online product presentations.

The effectiveness of virtual avatars in marketing varies significantly. It remains unclear how virtual avatars impact purchase intention. Therefore, this study aims to explore the effectiveness of two types of virtual avatars between high- and low-involvement products. This study constructs a theoretical model of the impact of virtual avatars—intelligent unrealistic and superficial avatars—on purchase intention and explores the boundary conditions of the double-edged sword effect. The results reveal that (1) intelligent unrealistic avatars increase purchase intention toward high-involvement products more than superficial avatars; (2) cognitive and social responses mediate the effect of intelligent unrealistic avatars on purchase intention; (3) superficial avatars increase purchase intention toward low-involvement products more than intelligent unrealistic avatars; (4) affective responses mediate the effect of superficial avatars on purchase intention. This study reveals the psychological mechanism of virtual avatars affecting consumers' purchase intention, and finds the “suppression” and “amplification” effects of virtual avatars. The findings could provide practical guidance for enterprises and marketers in virtual avatar design and practice.

The rise of generative AI (GenAI), such as ChatGPT, has transformed user communication. Consumers now use GenAI to craft personal messages, including birthday wishes, congratulatory notes, and even love poems. Although GenAI's technical capabilities are well documented, less is known about its psychological impacts in interpersonal contexts. This research investigates how consumers respond when using GenAI to author emotionally laden messages. Drawing on appraisal theory, we propose and find that GenAI use elicits guilt when presenting AI-generated messages as one's own. Across five preregistered experiments spanning varied messaging contexts, we demonstrate that consumers feel more guilt when they use GenAI for emotionally laden messages (vs. composing the message themselves). This effect is driven by perceived dishonesty. Supporting our dishonesty framework, we find that guilt also arises when a message is secretly written by a friend, but not when it comes on a pre-printed greeting card. Further consistent with a dishonesty account, the effect weakens when the message is written but not delivered, and when the recipient is socially distant (vs. close). This work advances theory by identifying perceived dishonesty as a key psychological mechanism behind consumer discomfort in GenAI-assisted personal communications and by incorporating appraisal theory as an explanatory framework. Practically, our findings suggest that firms and developers should design GenAI tools that emphasize transparency and co-creation to reduce negative emotional responses, especially in emotionally significant situations where honesty matters.