| Unfortunate events(e.g.,earthquakes,refugee crises and traffic accidents,etc.)typically attract the attention of a wide range of people in society.Such events stimulate secondary emotions(e.g.,empathy and sympathy)and can produce specific emotional resources in members of the public regarding victims.Among these emotional resources,secondary emotions such as empathy and sympathy exhibit stronger behavioral predictability and altruism than primary emotions such as sadness,which provide a good opportunity for social marketing in enterprises or social organizations.In marketing practice,a number of companies and social organizations have successfully employed secondary emotional resources to encourage consumers' prosocial decision-making,and established a positive brand image.For example,IKEA's “Home for a Refugee” campaign was designed to elicit sympathy/empathy for refugees among consumers,and to promote a particular prosocial behavior(e.g.,buying or donation),which had won a good social reputation.In recent years,a variety of unfortunate events such as public crises,natural crises,traffic accidents occur frequently,which require people to invest more sympathy or empathy for the victims,so as to induce their prosocial behaviors(such as helping the victims to get out of the predicament,recovery and reconstruction,etc.).However,research and practise show that achieving the goal is very challenging.Although most studies find empathy or sympathy is the key motivation source of prosocial behavior,but under the stimulus of unfortunate events,Whether there are essential differences between empathy and sympathy in social individuals?Why do the same social individual can experience different levels of empathy or sympathy emotional responses?Are there different effects of empathy/sympathy emotional responses on prosocial behavior? How do Social marketing manager stimulate consumer' empathy or sympathy to promote a particular behavior(e.g.,buying,donating)to benefit an organization or cause? Investigating the differences in the conditions,influences and effects of empathy and sympathy,witch will provide management solutions for administrators to effectively employ emotional resources and implement emotion-based marketing.A review of previous literature revealed limited research on the necessary conditions for producing empathy and sympathy and their influence on behavioral intentions,and several issues remain unresolved.First,conceptually,empathy and sympathy are secondary emotional responses,exhibiting different psychological processing processes for different types of stimuli.However,in previous studies,the distinction between empathy and sympathy has typically been neglected,their roles in consumer prosocial behaviors have often been mixed,and the independent role of sympathy has been neglected.Second,regarding the conditions required to produce secondary emotional responses,empathy and sympathy are often elicited with the combined action of specific emotional contexts and emotional cues.However,previous research has mainly focused on the independent impact of singular emotional cues or contexts on empathy or sympathy,and rarely examined the interaction influence of emotional context and emotional cues.Third,regarding influences and effects,previous research has mainly focused on the influence of empathy and its effects on prosocial behaviors such as helping others or making donations,and has rarely explored differences in the influence and effects of empathy in the same framework.Fourth,previous studies have typically focused on emotional responses such as empathy for pain in experimental situations,failing to explore how individuals exhibit emotional responses related to empathy and sympathy,as well as their impact on prosocial behaviors in a range of situations,such as natural disasters.To address the limitations of previous research described above and explore the emotional resources management path for society marketing practice,Based on the two-factor perspective of emotional context and emotional cues,Psychological Distance Theory,Construal-level Theory and Hot/Cool-System Dual-system Analysis Processing Theory,the current study focuses on the differences between empathy and sympathy in terms of their conceptual basis,the mechanisms by which they are produced,and their influence on consumer prosocial behaviors.this study constructed the following model:“emotional contexts or emotional cues—empathy/sympathy—consumer prosocial behaviors.” The paper then conducted three sub-studies: In the first study,differentiating and defining the concepts and features of empathy and sympathy,and explaining the main differences between the two;In the second study,Under the background of congruent emotional cues,the study explored the mechanisms of action of emotional context(social distance/spatial distance)on empathy/sympathy,and its influences and effects,as well as the intermediation of empathy and sympathy on consumer prosocial behaviors;and in the third study,under conditions of congruent/incongruent emotional cues,the study verified the mechanisms of interaction of emotional context(social distance)and emotional cues on empathy and sympathy to examine the intermediary pathways of their effects.Using bibliometric analysis,natural experiments and scenario-based experiments,the research collected multi-scenario data from natural disaster events and social unfortunate events,and conducted the analysis of multiple regression analysis,variance analysis with eviews10.0 and spss22.0 analysis software,obtaining the following research conclusions:(1)Empathy and sympathy were distinct emotional responses with differences in their conceptual basis,influencing factors,final results.The current study analyzed the existing literature using co-words analysis,Co-citation analysis and knowledge clustering analysis.The results revealed differences between empathy and sympathy in terms of purpose and motivation,influencing factors,and final results.(2)The results indicated reciprocal effects between emotional context and emotional cues on empathy and sympathy.Under conditions of congruent emotional cues,there was a stronger influence of close social/spatial distance on empathy,and a stronger influence of close social distance and far spatial distance on sympathy.In addition,there was no obvious difference in the impacts on empathy/sympathy of spatial distance under conditions of far social distance.Under conditions of incongruent emotional cues,the influence of close social distance on empathy/sympathy was stronger,whereas the level of empathy was decreased,the incongrent emotional cues(compared with congruent emotional cues)weakened the effect of close social distance on empathy,and enhanced the effect of far social distance on sympathy.(3)The results indicated that there were differences in the effects of empathy and sympathy on consumer prosocial behavior.empathy and sympathy mediated the reciprocal effects of emotional contexts and emotional cues on consumer prosocial behaviors,with empathy as the stronger mediator of the two.(4)The current research also concluded that there were differences in the interaction paths of emotional cues and emotional context on consumer prosocial behaviors.In the context of close social distance,empathy mediated the relationship between emotional cues and consumer prosocial behavior,that is,“close social distance?emotional cues?empathy?consumer prosocial behavior”;In the context of far social distance,sympathy mediated the relationship between emotional cues and consumer prosocial behavior,that is,“far social distance?emotional cues?sympathy?consumer prosocial behavior”.The conclusions of this research not only enrich the theory of emotional response,but also provide new insight for social marketing:First,based on bibliometric analysis,the current study summarized the development of research on empathy and sympathy,clarified the differences in influencing factors,reaction characteristics and final results,established an index system to define the connotation difference between empathy and sympathy,improved the current status of confusion research on empathy and sympathy.The study expanded the theoretical basis of consumer prosocial behavioral responses to unfortunate events,laid a foundation for future research,and provided new cues for emotional marketing management of social marketing activities.Second,based on the interactive perspectives of two-factor related to emotional contexts and emotional cues,which enriched the existing research approach on emotional marketing.By discussing the interaction mechanism of these two kinds of emotions,the current research can more truly depict the differences between social individual empathy and sympathy under unfortunate events,and provide more abundant research ideas for scholars to further explore the theories for relevant consumer emotional stimulation and emotional marketing.Third,The current study attempted to bring empathy and sympathy into the same research framework,and constructed a theoretical framework of “emotional context/emotional cues—empathy/empathy—consumer prosocial behavior”.Then,the paper analyzed the different elicited mechanisms by Unfortunate Events of empathy and sympathy and their effects on consumer prosocial behavior,provided a systematic framework for further clarifying the roles of empathy and sympathy in social marketing.Moreover,the current study provided new insight and a theoretical basis for the research and practice of emotional response and consumer prosocial behavior.Finally,the current research made an innovative attempt in the research methods of emotional response.By verifying this theoretical model using actual cases,the study adopted natural experiment method,and used Gooseeker software to capture the real-time and real microblog comment data after the natural disaster(Jiuzhaigou earthquake),the laboratory data of the scenario experiment method was used to cross-verify the above research conclusions.This innovative method is helpful to reflect more accurately the emotional reaction and subsequent behavioral intention expression of social individuals after the occurrence of unfortunate events.Above all,the current study provided empirical evidence and practical suggestions regarding management practice in relation to emotional resources and social marketing strategies.Thus,the current findings may be useful for informing emotion-based marketing theory,and providing new insight for the social marketing of organizations. |
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