The Influence And Mechanism Of Haze Exposure On Consumers’ Boundary Preferences

With the frequent occurrence of haze weather around the world and continuous deterioration of our living environment in recent years,air pollution problems,especially haze weather have attracted worldwide attention and become a common research subject in the world.So whether exposure on haze weather will affect consumers’ psychology and behaviour? Although this exploration has important theoretical value and practical significance,there’s little research has discussed this issue so far.Therefore,based on compensatory consumer theory,this research explores the phenomenon,mediation and moderation mechanism of haze exposure on consumers’ boundary preferences.Based on previous research on boundary,perceived control and desire for control,this research establishes a research framework regarding the effect of haze exposure on consumers’ boundary preferences and tests three proposed hypotheses through three laboratory experiments.Experiment 1 uses a haze exposure(high exposure condition vs.low exposure condition vs.control condition)one factor between subjects design,in which manipulates haze exposure through recall tasks.With consumers’ choice of product that packaged or unpackaged as dependent variable,this experiment preliminarily examines the influence of haze exposure on consumers’ boundary preferences,finding that when under high haze exposure condition,consumers are more likely to choose bounded product than when under low haze exposure condition,thus provides support for hypothesis 1.Experiment 2 also uses a haze exposure(high exposure condition vs.low exposure condition)one factor between subjects design.Like experiment 1,experiment 2 manipulates haze exposure through recall methods,and takes consumers’ choice of a painting with framed or unframed as well as choice of a brand logo with bounded or unbounded as dependentvariable.The findings are consistent with the results of experiment 1,again demonstrate the effect of haze exposure on consumers’ boundary preferences.Importantly,experiment 2 further examines why haze exposure will increase consumers’ boundary preferences and shows the mediating effect of sense of control.The results support hypothesis 2,that is,sense of control as a mechanism for these effects.Experiment 3 uses a 2(haze exposure: high exposure condition vs.low exposure condition)x 2(desire for control: high vs.low)between subjects design.The difference about the manipulation of the the haze exposure between experiment 3and the former experiments lies in a dual boot mode that realised by picture show and recall tasks is used to complete manipulation in this experiment.Taking consumers’ choice of a painting with framed or unframed,a shelf with or without borders and a logo with bounded or unbounded as dependent variable,experiment 3 shows the effect of haze exposure on consumers’ boundary preferences and the moderating role of need for control,thus verifies hypothesis 3.That is,the main effect of haze exposure on consumers’ boundary preferences was moderated by their desire for control.Specifically,only for consumers with high desire for control,haze exposure will increase their preferences for boundary,but for those whose desire for control is low,the phenomenon that haze exposure increases their boundary preferences will disappear.This research introduces haze exposure into the study of boundary preferences and examines the influence of haze exposure on consumers’ preferences for boundary through three experiments.Futher,this research explores the underlying psychological mechanism and moderator variable.Theoretically,this exploration of the relationship between haze exposure and consumers’ boundary preferences will advance existing literature on haze exposure and boundary,as well as research on sense of control and desire for control.Moreover,this research will also enrich and deepen our understanding on conpensatory consumption.In practice,this exploration can provide useful theoretical basis and practical guidance for formulation of company’s marketing strategies,and can also help consumers better understanding their own consumption behaviors.