Post-traumatic consumption: Does emotion regulation moderate the relationship between military life stressors, mental health outcomes, and compulsive buying?

Purpose

Consumers may cope with stressful events and their resulting negative mental health outcomes through maladaptive behaviors. One such behavior is compulsive buying, an uncontrolled urge to purchase things. This can have devastating financial consequences, especially among vulnerable members of the population. Emotion regulation research suggests that differences in individuals' ability to manage and cope with stressors may attenuate their negative consequences. Thus, this research investigates whether expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal, two types of emotion regulation, moderate whether and how stressors related to a military deployment and its mental health outcomes relate to compulsive consumption.

Approach

This prospective naturalistic multiphase study followed a US Army unit during a combat deployment cycle and analyzed survey data collected before, during, and after its members' deployment to Afghanistan.

Findings

The findings identify the moderating role of emotion regulation strategies on the relationship between mental health symptoms and compulsive buying. Servicemembers with high mental health symptoms were less likely to engage in compulsive buying if they had high expressive suppression. Although the emotion regulatory profile of high suppression and low reappraisal is usually considered the least beneficial, it emerges as a buffer against engaging in compulsive buying behavior.

Originality

This field study explored the rarely researched topic of compulsive buying within a military population that routinely faces stressful situations. The research also contributes to the growing body of evidence of the role of strategies for emotion regulation in the context of potentially maladaptive behaviors in the marketplace.