| Since the global outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020,the entire world economic and social environment has already suffered a major shock.According to data jointly released by the United Nations World Tourism Organization(UNWTO)and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development(UNCTAD),the number of international tourist arrivals worldwide declined by 73% in 2020 compared to 2019,causing an overall economic loss estimated at US$2.4 trillion,while the economic loss in tourism and related industries in 2021 is estimated to reach between1.2 and 3.3 trillion USD.At the same time,global environmental changes become on an accelerated trajectory: in 2020,devastating wild fires erupted in the United States and Australia,burning for months;in 2021,extreme summer rainstorms and floods almost simultaneously in took place in China and Germany;in the summer of 2022,extreme hot weather enveloped the entire northern hemisphere,with extreme temperatures of 40 degrees or more lasting for months in many places;and in early2023,a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck southern Turkey,killing more than46,000 people and causing economic losses of more than $100 billion.In addition,international geopolitics is moving in an unstable direction: with the Russian-Ukrainian war already continuing into 2023,causing hundreds of thousands of casualties,and the perceived threat of death heightened by the prominence of information about nuclear war.It has to be acknowledged that,after 2020,we have entered an era of turbulences,in which we have to be simultaneously exposed to multiple environmental threats,and the two most prominent environmental threat at present are the threats of infection and mortality.In fact,the COVID-19 pandemic is not the first time,nor will it be the last time,that humans face a global pandemic.The emergence of a global epidemic of monkeypox virus,as well as annual outbreaks of influenza virus and norovirus,all indicate that humans are under constant threat from infectious diseases,and the global outbreak of the COVID-19 is merely a wake-up call for us.Current research in evolutionary psychology has revealed that human societies,in the long struggle against infectious threats,have developed a Behavioral Immune System(BIS)that actively defends infectious disease threats.The theory holds that humans,upon receiving a signal of infectious threat,are quickly motivated to avoid it and take various ways to actively prevent from getting infection.This behavioral immune system is the first line of defense against infectious diseases because it prevents the body from getting infected,rather than reacting after the germs have entered the body,as in the case of physiological immunity.Moreover,as humans continue to compete and evolve with pathogens,this behavioral immune system has gradually functioned in many aspects of human physiology,emotion,cognition,personality,aesthetic preferences,intergroup attitudes,social interactions,moral judgments,cultural and political orientations,and life history strategies.From another perspective,Terror Management Theory(TMT),is a foundational theory that explores human psychological and behavioral coping strategies triggered by the threat of mortality.The theory suggests that although humans,like other animals,face the inevitable death,they can counteract the long-term potential fear of death by achieving spiritual immortality through compensatory strategies such as enhancing self-esteem,searching for close relationships,and embracing a group worldview.This study takes the Behavioral Immune System and Terror Management as the theoretical basis,to investigate the changes in consumer general product decisions and specific product decisions(such as experience products and probability products),under the condition of infection or mortality information salience;and further explores the mediating mechanisms of infection information and mortality information on consumer behaviors based on Construal Level Theory.The study also explores the manipulable variables that can regulate the influence of infection information and mortality information on consumer behavior,so as to provide practical marketing strategies for governments or enterprises to cope with the challenges in the current complex market environment.The main research components and findings are stated as follows:First,this study systematically analyzes the literature related to Behavioral Immune System theory,and categorizes the research results of this theory in the areas of physiology,emotion,cognition,personality,aesthetic preference,intergroup attitude,social interaction,moral judgment,political and cultural values and life history strategies according to the research streams.Then,a comparative analysis of the research related to Terror Management theory reveals that there may be areas of intersection between the two theories,especially in the areas of cognition,social behavior and life history strategies.These theoretical crossover fields are likely associated with consumers’ mindsets in general product decisions,in experiential product preferences and in probabilistic product choices.Therefore,a framework for empirical research is established based on further review of literature related to Construal Level theory,experiential consumption research,and probabilistic marketing research.In the empirical studies,we first examined the effect of contagion and mortality information on consumers’ construal levels through a content analysis and two experiments.The study found that infection information would induce consumers to develop low construal(concrete)mindsets,while mortality information would induce consumers to develop high construal(abstract)mindsets.Subsequently,five experiments were conducted to verify that infection and mortality information influenced consumers’ construal level and thus influenced their choices in general product decisions.Experiment 3 examined the effect of infection and mortality information on consumers’ product core/ peripheral attribute preferences;Experiment4 identified the mediating mechanism of this effect by promoting consumers to develop concrete mindsets and thus pay more attention to product with peripheral advantages;Experiment 5 again verified the mediating mechanism of construal level by a“moderation-of-process” design,and also confirmed that advance selling strategy could mitigate the effect of infection information;Experiment 6 tested that infection(vs.mortality)information promoted consumers to prefer larger product choice sets,through reducing consumers’ construal level;Experiment 7 explored that the product utilitarian function attenuated the effect of infection information on consumers’ preference for a larger choice set.Next,this study explored the impacts of infection information and mortality information on consumers’ experiential product preferences and their mediating mechanisms through three experiments.Experiment 8 verified the main effect of infection information(vs.mortality information)on consumers’ preference for exclusive(vs.social)experience products;Experiment 9 examined the mitigating effect of vaccination completion on the impact of infection information on consumers’ preference for exclusive experience products;Experiment 10 verified the mediating mechanism of infection information on consumers’ preference for exclusive experience products by making them perceiving a closer spatial distance.Subsequently,this study identified the mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions by which infection vs.mortality information affects consumers’ probabilistic product choice through three experiments.Experiment 11 examined the main effect of infection information(vs.mortality information)to promote consumers to choose probabilistic(vs.certainty)products;Experiment 12 verified that the effects of infection and mortality information on consumer choice of probabilistic products reversed in a loss framing;Experiment 13 demonstrated through two sub-experiments that for both horizontal and vertical probabilistic products,infection information promoted consumers to choose probabilistic products by making them overestimate the probability of getting the best product.The main theoretical contributions of this study are as follows.First,this study found that infection and mortality information affect consumer construal level mindset.The salience of infection information leads people to pay more attention to concrete,surface,and detailed information,and thus tend to adopt a concrete mindset;while the reminder of death information leads people to pay more attention to abstract,essential,and holistic information,and thus tend to adopt an abstract construal.This finding expands the field of research on environmental antecedents influencing consumers’ cognitive patterns by linking the Construal Level theory to infection and mortality threats for the first time.Second,in the research field of consumer decision,general research suggests that rational consumers should give more consideration to the core attribute advantages of product,and will avoid the choice distress caused by an overly large choice set.However,this study found in a series of experiments that consumers tend to adopt a concrete mindset when infection information is highlighted,so they are more likely to be attracted by the product’s marginal attribute advantage in their choice decision,and prefer a larger choice set;while consumers tend to adopt an abstract mindset when mortality information is salient,so that they will pay more attention to the product’s core attribute advantage in their choice decisions and prefer a smaller choice set.The results of this study provide clear cognitive paths for the influence of infection and mortality information on consumers’ product choices,and provide new research perspectives on the environmental factors that influence consumer decisions.Third,in terms of experience consumption,this study reveals the mechanism of infection and mortality information on consumers’ experience product preferences:contagion information makes consumers prefer exclusive experience products by making them perceive a closer spatial distance,while mortality information promotes consumers to prefer social experience products by making them perceive the spatial distance farther.The results of this study break the rule of "social advantage" in experience consumption research and provide a new environmental moderating variable for experience consumption research: when consumers are in an infectious threatening environment,the original “social advantage” in experiential consumption becomes a “social disadvantage”,and the exclusive experience product becomes the advantageous to meet the new needs of consumers.Fourth,in the context of probabilistic marketing research,this study reveals the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions by which infection and mortality information affect consumers’ probabilistic product choices: infection information induces consumers to overestimate the probability of acquisition and thus prefer probabilistic products,while mortality information makes consumers to underestimate the probability of acquisition and thus prefer certainty products;and explores that this effect will reverse in the loss framing.This finding not only provides a key environmental antecedent variable for probabilistic marketing research,but also identifies a boundary condition for the Prospect Theory: in the salience of infection information,consumers’ risk preferences in the loss and gain framing are opposite to that predicted by Prospect Theory.Finally,one of the outstanding contributions of this study is to explore the intersection and boundary between Behavioral Immune System and Terror Management theories,and to link them with Construal Level theory.So that we can establish a bridge between the three basic theories,and integrate them into marketing research,in order to provide a broader theoretical basis for explaining consumer behavioral changes in a complex environment.In addition,the series of findings from this study have important practical guidance that can help governments and enterprises to adjust relevant policies and marketing strategies when facing increasingly complex environmental threats,thereby promoting the stable and healthy development of the market economy. |
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