Research On Acting Mechanism Of Social Crowding To Consumers’ Unique Consumption Intention

With the rapid growth of the world’s population,the number of people gathering in limited geographical areas is increasing,and the phenomenon of social crowding is becoming increasingly serious.As a country with the largest population in the world,social crowding is particularly obvious in China.For example,social crowding has become a common social phenomenon in daily life in tourist attractions,railway stations during holidays,and subway stations and bus stations during rush hours.Social crowding refers to the experience state in which individuals feel constrained due to the large population density per unit area,often accompanied by uncomfortable subjective feelings such as anxiety and pressure,which means that social crowding will bring negative psychological experience to individuals and threaten their psychological state.Faced with the threat of social crowding to self-psychology,consumers will compensate themselves through consumption to cope with the psychological threat,so as to repair their self-psychology.This is because consumption can not only meet the material needs of consumers,but also has a certain symbolization.Through the symbolization of consumption,individuals can convey certain information about themselves to the outside world,such as self-concept and identity,so as to meet some psychological needs of themselves.Because social crowding will blur the boundaries of self and threaten the clarity of self-concept,individuals can show their personality to the outside world through unique consumption and enhance the clarity of self-concept.Whether social crowding affect individual’s unique consumption intention? Few have explored the relationship between the two.Therefore,this study will explore whether social crowding can be used as an antecedent variable to affect individual uniqueness consumption intention.What is the explanation mechanism? And what are the boundary conditions?This is the main problem that this research devotes to study and solve.In the context of social crowding,the spatial distance between individuals and others keeps shrinking,and the social distance becomes closer.Consequently,the perceived overlap between self and others in the context of social crowding is high,blurring the boundaries of self,and thus threatening the clarity of self-concept.When self-concept clarity is threatened,individuals have a higher need for self-expression.The unique product is a differentiated product,which can better demonstrate self-personality,meet the needs of self-expression,and enhance the clarity of self-concept.Therefore,this study suggests that social crowding will increase individual’s unique consumption intention,and self-expression needs to play a mediating role in the impact of social crowding to individual’s unique consumption intention.The present study further suggests the moderating role of self-construal.In a crowded society,due to the existence of a large number of others,the space between people keeps shrinking,and the perceived self and others have a higher overlap.For individuals with interdependent self-construal,they may be more tolerant of the existence of others and expect to pursue close connection with others.Such overlap between themselves and others is exactly what individuals expect.It can meet the need to establish social connection with others,so it will not increase the unique consumption intention to express themselves.For independent self-construal individuals,the overlap between self and others is abhorred by individuals,which can blur the boundaries of self and reduce individual independence and autonomy.Therefore,individuals will increase their unique consumption intention to express themselves and repair the clarity of self-concept.In addition to self-construal,this paper argues that the sense of power also moderates the relationship between social crowding and unique consumption intention.Individuals with high sense of power have more resources and attach more importance to self-expression.In the face of the threat of social crowding,individuals with high sense of power express themselves more through unique consumption to cope with the threat of self-concept clarity.However,individuals with low sense of power lack resources,are more dependent on others,and attach less importance to self-expression.When faced with the threat of social crowding,they are more likely to deal with the threat of self-concept clarity by seeking intimate relationship rather than unique consumption.Based on the above logical thinking,this study puts forward four hypotheses.Hypothesis 1 proposes that compared with non-social crowding,social crowding will increase individuals’ unique consumption intention,and hypothesis 2 proposes that selfexpression needs play a mediating role in the impact of social crowding on unique consumption intention.Specifically,compared with non-social crowding,social crowding will stimulate individual’s need for self-expression,thus increasing individual’s unique willingness to consume.Hypothesis 3 proposes that self-construal moderates the impact of social crowding on unique consumption intention.To be specific,for independent self-construal,social crowding will increase the need for selfexpression and improve the individual’s unique consumption intention,while for interdependent self-constructors,social crowding has no significant impact on the unique consumption intention.Hypothesis 4 proposes that the sense of power moderates the impact of social crowding on unique consumption intention.To be specific,for individuals with a high sense of power,social crowding will increase the need for selfexpression and thus improve the individual’s unique consumption intention,while for individuals with a low sense of power,social crowding has no significant impact on the unique consumption intention.In this study,three studies were conducted to verify four hypotheses.The main purpose of study I was to verify the main effect.By designing two laboratory experiments and one field experiment,it was found that social crowding would increase individuals’ unique consumption intention compared with non-social crowding,thus verifying hypothesis 1.Study 2 on the basis of Study 1,two experiments were designed to verify the mediating effect of need for self-expression.Experiments 4 is the way by measuring the self-expression needs to verify the mediation mechanism,side by side in addition to the unique requirements of alternative explanation mechanism,experiment 5is the way by manipulating self-expression needs to verify the mediation mechanism of self expression is verified by the two methods need the intermediary role,increase the intermediary effect of robustness,thus the hypothesis 2 is verified.In study 3,two laboratory experiments and one field experiment were conducted to verify the moderating effects of self-construal and sense of power as well as the entire theoretical model framework.In experiment 6,self-construal was measured to verify the moderating effect of self-construal on the impact of social crowding on unique consumption intention.Hypothesis 3 was established.In experiment 7,the moderating effect of perceived power on the impact of social crowding on unique consumption intention was verified by manipulating perceived power.Hypothesis 4 was established.Experiment 8 verifies the hypothesis of the whole theoretical model through field experiments,so that the research results have good external validity.To sum up,this study constructed a model framework of the influence mechanism of social crowding on unique consumption intention.In theory,this research focus on the general social situation influence on uniqueness willingness to spend,namely social crowded affects the uniqueness of the individual consumer willingness to expand the social crowded positive influence in the field of consumer behavior research,discovered the self-expression needs in social crowded intermediary role in the process of impact on uniqueness willingness to spend,It identifies the moderating role of selfconstrual and sense of power,which expands and deepens the research on unique consumption.In terms of marketing practice,enterprises should give full play to the role of social crowding in the marketing of unique products,establish the connection between the need for self-expression and the consumption of unique products,and initiate the promotion of self-construction and sense of power in the marketing of relevant products.