Uphold Or Let Go? The Influence Of Product Emotional Attachment On Consumers’ Willingness To Participate In Collaborative Consumption

As a new kind of culture and economy, Collaborative Consumption springs up allaround the world, which breaks through the traditional business model to be a hotissue in the future. With new characteristics of openness, the sense of community andthe spirit of cooperation, Collaborative Consumption gives full play to the value ofexisting items and embodies the best trend of sustainable development.Collaborative consumption has many types, including the Product service system,Redistribution markets and Collaborative lifestyles. Among them, the type of"redistribution markets" refers to individual consumers who will put products backinto the market circulation to realize the value of goods, such as sell secondhandgoods on the website of the eBay and TaoBao, instead of simply discarding or layingaside through sale, donation or trade-off after the purchase of the product. This kindof collaborative consumption is one of the most commonly used decision-makingmethods by consumers, which can be regarded as consumer behavior of participatingin Collaborative Consumption.The author will explore consumers’ the willingness to participating in CollaborativeConsumption from the perspective of product disposal decision, regarding consumers’willingness to choose the way of collaborative disposal as the operational definition ofconsumers’ willingness to choose collaborative consumption. In the past plenty ofresearch showed that product emotional attachment is the important factors affectingthe product disposal and perception of the product’s usefulness may adjust the effectof emotional attachment. Therefore, this paper assumes that the degree of consumers’product emotional attachment may also affect their willingness to participate incollaborative consumption behavior and further put forward the new mechanism ofthe influence of product emotional attachment on product disposal. At the same time,assuming that perception of product’s usefulness may have the moderating effect onmediating effect. Two experiments will be conducted to verify the above twohypothesis and come to the following conclusions: product emotional attachmentaffects product disposal decisions through the tendency to keep products and further,the perception of products’usefulness adjusts the level of the mediating effect. Finally,the results of theoretical and practical significance will be discussed, and thedeficiency of this thesis research and future research direction will be put forward.