Research On Consumer's Normative Rationality

As the significant sign to measure the progress of social civilization, consumers' behaviors have been more and more constrained by social values and ethic codes, and keep consistent with those social norms. The characteristics of normative rationality, therefore, are more and more embodied from the consumer behavior. There are a plenty of problems worthy of further research within this process, such as how the consumer's normative rationality constrain consumer behavior, what sorts of factors influence the normative rationality's constraints on these behaviors, and which groups of consumers reflect more characteristics of normative rationality, and so on. Hence, this study has defined the dimension of consumer's normative rationality, and verified the internal mechanism of normative rationality's influences on consumer's behaviors through empirical study basing upon the definitions of extension and intension of consumer's normative rationality's concept.Through the research, we obtained the following results:First of all, we acquired an overall framework of the relation between consumer's normative rationality's extension and intension, as well as the definition of consumer's normative rationality though text analysis of mainstream social norms and study on consumer behavior-related literature.Second, we got the dimensions of consumer's normative rationality, which are norm perception, norm identification and normative behavior intention, also revealed the relation model among those three dimension, and the mechanism of its influences on consumer behavior. In order to obtain this result, we surveyed on a big sample, while applied exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. What the result told us was that there are two paths for normative rationality to influence consumer behavior. One is that the norm perception influences normative behavior intention, and afterwards norm behavior intention influences buying behavior. The other is that the norm identification formed by the internalization of norm perception influences normative behavior intention, and then norm behavior intention influences buying behavior.Last, we illustrated the influences of demographic variables, responsibility attribution and consequences awareness on the internal dimensions of normative rationality, and the relation between the dimensions and consumer behavior. Moreover, the study casted light on the crucial impact of economic rationality (marked by price factor) on the relation between normative rationality and consumer behavior.The major contribution of this study lies in that it offers a measurement on consumer's normative rationality, and analyzes the decision mechanism of buying behavior constrained by social norms. It can also be considered as a reference for enterprises to learn about consumer behavior, affect consumers through social responsible behaviors, which may conform with their normative rationality, as well as obtain the consumers'recognitions and support.