The Effect Of Electronic Payment On Spending Behavior

Electronic account has gradually become the main mental account among young consumers.The consumers’ behavior when using electronic payment may be different from credit card and cash payments.Prior researches had explained the differences between credit card and cash payments by attributing them to pain of paying,mental accounting,and classical conditioning et al.,however it is still uncovered as to electronic payment.The present study compared and explained the difference effect between electronic account and cash account in the consumer behaviors.Study 1mainly determined the status of payment methods,study 2 further explored the psychological and behavioral differences caused by the main payment methods.Study3 deeply estimated the willingness to pay and explored the mechanism based on study1 and study 2.Study 1 demonstrated that electronic account is the main mental account of consumers by a survey.The propensity to use,the amount held in the account,the proportion of payment and the psychological cost were significantly greater in the cash account condition as compared with the electronic account condition.Study 2 confirmed that there were some psychological and behavioral differences when using different payment through several experiments.In terms of psychological feelings,ownership and self-object association of the account were measured by the scale and IAT experiment,the loss aversion and loss pain were measured by the classical loss aversion experiment and the pain scale.Results showed that the sense of ownership,loss aversion and pain of loss was higher in electronic payment condition.But the self-object association was no difference between the two accounts.In terms of behavior,present study compared the preference of consumers’ payment through two situational experiments under different scenarios,which were both within-subjects design.Scenario1 was a 2(valence: losses vs.gains)× 3(amount of money: 25 vs.200 vs.1000)design,demonstrated that individuals preferred paying by cash in loss condition and receiving money through electronic account in gain condition.As the amount of money became greater,individuals were more inclined to use electronic accounts.Scenario2 was a 2(Commodity attributes: hedonic vs.practical)× 3(amount of money: 25 vs.200 vs.1000)design,demonstrated that individuals preferred using cash accounts in hedonic consumption compared with in practical consumption.Study 3 consisted of two experiments verified the electronic payment effect and the mechanism.Experiment 1 was a within-between design,the subjects were given 20 yuan in advance after finishing unrelated tasks and participated the BDM procedure one week later.The payment methods were between variable,and the commodity attribute(hedonic / practical)and amount(low / high)were within variables.The result showed that there was no significant difference between the electronic account and the cash account because the setting price is too small.Experiment 2 further increased the price of the four products corresponding to experiment 1.Results showed that the willing to pay of electronic account were higher and the payment effect was observed.Moreover,there were parallel mediation effect of ownership,transparency and purchasing happiness in the relationship between payment and willingness to buy.In sum,electronic account is widely used and has become the main psychological account of young consumers(Study 1);People exhibited different degrees of loss aversion and had different preferences when using electronic payment and cash payment(Study 2)and there was a domain-specific preference for electronic payment(Study 3).