Context Effects of Mobile Consumer Behavior: Test of Affect and Regulatory Focus Theory in Shopping and Investment Decisions

消费者越来越多地使用移动的设备进行购买决策-到2021年，美国的移动的商务销售额将达到3600亿美元。鉴于移动的设备的便携性，消费者的决策很可能受到其当前环境背景的影响。在这个项目的继续阶段，我们建议分析两个候选人的心理机制，调解环境背景的影响，移动的消费者行为的情况下，消费者追求特定的目标。我们建议调查如何拥挤和天气在消费者的位置可能会影响消费者的情感状态和/或监管重点，最终影响他们在这些领域的选择。我们的研究将填补文献中的一个重要空白。虽然先前的研究发现天气和拥挤都会影响移动的消费者行为，但这些影响背后的心理机制尚不清楚。此外，影响消费者的情感状态和/或目标追求行为的情境因素的现有工作大多局限于实验室环境，从而无法解释移动的消费者所遇到的环境变化的影响。我们提出了一个理论框架，并推导出假设，我们通过一个预先测试的实验范式，使用情境沉浸式视频来操纵感知的环境背景下的研究参与者进行测试。除了一系列在线实验外，我们还计划使用额外的二级现场数据。使用主要和次要数据，我们将测试我们的假设在两个领域的移动的消费者行为的社会重要性的环境背景的作用：（i）移动的购物和（ii）投资决策。

Consumers increasingly use mobile devices for purchase decisions - mobile commerce sales have been attributed to account for $360bn in the U.S. in 2021. Given the portable nature of mobile devices, consumer decisions most likely are influenced by their current environmental context. In the continuation phase of this project, we propose to analyze two candidate psychological mechanisms that mediate the influence of the environmental context on mobile consumer behavior in situations where consumers pursue specific goals. We propose to investigate how the crowdedness and the weather at consumers’ location may influence consumers’ affective state and/or regulatory focus, ultimately impacting their choices in these domains. Our research will fill an important gap in the literature. While previous research has found both weather and crowdedness to influence mobile consumer behavior, the psychological mechanism(s) behind these effects are unclear. Furthermore, prior work on situational factors influencing consumers’ affective state and/or goal pursuit behavior has mostly been confined to a lab environment, thereby being unable to account for the impact of the environmental variation encountered by mobile consumers. We propose a theoretical framework, and derive hypotheses that we test via a pre-tested experimental paradigm using situationally-immersive videos to manipulate the perceived environmental context of research participants. In addition to a series of online experiments, we also plan to use additional secondary field data. Using primary and secondary data, we will test our hypotheses on the role of environmental context in two domains of mobile consumer behavior with substantial societal importance: (i) mobile shopping and (ii) investment decisions.