The Impact Of Public Health Emergencies On The Typical Consumption Behaviors Of Chinese Residents

Since the beginning of 2020,the event that has had the greatest impact on our country and the world has been the outbreak of COVID-19.The outbreak of the pandemic has not only caused great losses to the lives and health of Chinese residents,but also had a profound impact on the lifestyles and behaviors of Chinese residents.One of the important aspects is the impact on consumer behaviors of Chinese residents,which includes irrational consumption behaviors in outbreak period such as conformity consumption and scarcity consumption,and which also includes the long-term changes in willingness to consume items such as health consumption and experiential consumption.In this background,based on two dimensions that are “the time sequence influence of sudden public health emergencies” and “the social and personal attributes of consumer behaviors”,this paper selects conformity consumption,scarcity consumption,health consumption and experiential consumption as typical consumption behaviors of residents during the pandemic period.And then,through four empirical studies,it explores the impact of public health emergencies on these four typical consumer behaviors.this paper adopts the methods of combining questionnaire survey and public data for analysis,and then adopts the method of tracking survey,obtaining the relevant data of residents' psychology and consumption behaviors during the outbreak period and the stable period of the pandemic to make a comparative study.Specifically,we first collected the data on the psychology and consumer behavior of 1,548 residents who were from 31 provincial administrative regions,297 prefecture-level cities through the questionnaire survey in the outbreak period(February 2020).And then in the stable stage(August 2020),six months after the outbreak of the pandemic,we selected 500 participants in the above respondents and did follow-up surveys through questionnaire again,a total of 466 questionnaires collected.In terms of data matching,according to the time and place when the respondent answered the questionnaire,we queried the real-time pandemic data published by the Health Commission of the place where the respondent was located on that day.Then we matched this data with those obtained from the questionnaire and conducted empirical tests using such combined data.In the first empirical study,we mainly analyzed the influencing mechanism of the pandemic on residents' conformity consumption.Based on the theoretical deduction,we propose three research hypotheses and a moderated mediating effect model,and then tested the hypotheses and robustness through regression analysis,Bootstrap analysis and other methods.The results are as follows:(1)The pandemic promotes the conformity consumption behavior of residents.Specifically,the more severe the pandemic is,the more likely the residents are to engage in informational conformity consumption and normative conformity consumption.(2)The influence of the pandemic on the conformity consumption behavior is short-term.Only in the outbreak period,the conformity consumption behavior is affected by the severity of the pandemic,and this influence will disappear in the stable period.(3)Perceived control plays a mediating role between the impact of pandemic on conformity consumption,that is,pandemic will reduce perceived control of residents,and residents will compensate for the lack of control through conformity consumption;(4)Population size plays a moderating role in the influence of pandemic on conformity consumption.When the number of residents living together is large,the influence of pandemic on conformity consumption is greater than that when the number of residents living together is small.In the second empirical study,we mainly analyzed the influencing mechanism of the pandemic on residents' scarcity consumption.Based on the theoretical deduction,we propose three research hypotheses and a moderated mediating effect model,and then tested the hypotheses and robustness through regression analysis,Bootstrap analysis and other methods.The results are as follows:(1)The pandemic promotes the scarcity consumption behavior of residents.Specifically,the more severe the pandemic is,the more likely residents are to engage in scarcity consumption.(2)The impact of the pandemic on residents' scarcity consumption behavior is short-term.Only in the outbreak period,residents' scarcity consumption behavior will be affected by the severity of the pandemic,and the impact will disappear in the stable period.(3)Materialism plays a mediating role in the impact of pandemic on scarcity consumption,that is,the pandemic will enhance residents' materialism tendency,and then promote their scarcity consumption behavior;(4)Perceived social support plays a moderating role in the impact of the pandemic on the scarcity consumption.When the residents perceive more social support,the impact of the pandemic on their scarcity consumption is less than that of the residents who perceive less social support.In the third empirical study,we mainly analyzed the influencing mechanism of the pandemic on residents' health consumption.Based on the theoretical deduction,we propose three research hypotheses and a moderated mediating effect model,and then tested the hypotheses and robustness through regression analysis,Bootstrap analysis and other methods.The results are as follows:(1)The pandemic promotes residents' willingness of health consumption.Specifically,the more severe the pandemic is,the stronger residents' willingness of health consumption will be.(2)The impact of the pandemic on residents' willingness of health consumption is long-term,which not only exsits during the outbreak period,but also during the stable period.(3)Sense of fear plays a mediating role in the impact of pandemic on residents' willingness of health consumption,that is,the pandemic will increase residents' sense of fear,and then promotes their willingness of health consumption;(4)Self-esteem plays a moderating role between sense of fear and health consumption intention.Compared with individuals with high self-esteem,pandemic has a greater influence on health consumption intention of individuals with low self-esteem.In the fourth empirical study,we mainly analyzed the influencing mechanism of the pandemic on residents' experiential consumption.Based on the theoretical deduction,we put forward four research hypotheses and a double-path mediating effect model and then tested the hypotheses and robustness through regression analysis,Bootstrap analysis and other methods.The results are as follows:(1)The pandemic has a double-path influence on residents' willingness of experiential consumption,and such double-path influence exerts different patterns during the outbreak period and the stable period respectively.(2)During the outbreak,on the one hand,pandemic promotes the residents' need to belong,and then enhances their willingness of experiential consumption.On the other hand,pandemic promotes the risk perception of the residents,and then reduces their willingness of experiential consumption.Under such effects of the two paths,the impact of pandemic on residents' experiential consumption will show a masking effect.(3)During the stable period of the pandemic,the effect of residents' risk perception path will disappear,and then the pandemic will have a positive effect on residents' experiential consumption.In the last chapter,we comprehensively discuss the conclusions of the above studies,point out the shortcomings of this study and look forward to the direction of future research in related fields.