The Impacts Of Ego Depletion On Impulsive Purchasing

Objective:Self-control is one of the most important psychological functions of human being.The use of self-control will cause the loss of energy.Self-control resource model think that self-control will cause the loss of some energy resource,which will result in the failure of self-control for the lack of self-control resource in the following decision-making tasks,for example the behaviors of impulsive purchasing.Therefore,the goal of this experiment is exploring the influence of ego-depletion and emotion on impulsive purchasing behaviors.Method:The research adopted the method of experiment,experiment 1 and experiment 2 both use the "stroop" task manipulate the ego-depletion of the participants,and both of the experiments simulate the consumer decision-making situations with projective method so as to show the real decision-making of the participants.It also used video materials to induce the emotion of participants and explore the relationships between the three factors.Experiment 1:adopting the design of single factor between the participants,independent variable is the type of ego-depletion(high loss VS low loss),dependent variable is the impulsive purchasing behavior.Experiment 2:adopting the design of 2(the type of self-depletion:high loss VS low loss)*3(emotions:positive VS neutral VS negative)double factors,the dependent factor is the impulsive purchasing behavior.Results:The analysis of this research used SPSS 17.0.The analysis of result of the experiment 1 shows that the ego-depletion of participants causes obvious influence on their impulsive purchasing behaviors(t(28)=2.136,p<.05).The analysis of result of the experiment 2 shows that the interactive effect between ego-depletion and emotions is notable(F=3.32,p<.05).Conclusions:1.Varying degrees of self-depletion will cause varying degrees of impulsive purchasing behaviors.Consumers of high ego-depletion tend to have more impulsive purchasing behaviors that those of loe ego-depletion.2.Emotions could alleviate as well as promote ego-depletion,which will influence consumers' decisions on purchases.After the generating of self-depletion effect on consumers,the inducing of positive emotions will help overcome the self-depletion of consumers,which will help them reduce the impulsive purchasing behaviors;otherwise,the inducing of negative emotions will accelerate the ego depletion of the consumers,which will accelerate their impulsive purchasing behaviors.