The Effect Of Time(VS.Money)Concept On Conformity

Conformity as a common social phenomenon,is widely researched in the field of social psychology and consumer psychology research.Different studies have shown that individuals' conformity tendency is not only affected by some stable factors,such as individual characteristics,but also by external environment factors.It is known that time and money are the two precious but opposite resources that human own.Studies hve shown that as two kinds of environmental factors,time and money would affect individuals' cognition and behavior decision-making.This paper mainly studies the influence that time and money have on individuals' tendency of conformity and product selection,as well as the explanatory mechanism and boundary effects.In order to verify the relationship between activating time(vs.money)and conformity,this study has conducted three experiments with the single factor experiment design(time vs.money vs.control),and using the chi-square test and the logistic regression analysis data,and finally verify the hypothesis in this paper.The first experiment shows that activating time(vs.money),individuals are more inclined to conformity as they would prefer majority-endorsed choices.Experiment 2 studies have shown that the mediator function of the social distance,namely that activating time(vs.money)decreases individuals' perceptive social distance with the others,thus individuals would more likely choose majority-endorsed choices;Experiment 3 verifies the moderation role of loneliness.Loneliness has a influence on the way activating time(vs.money)affects individuals' perceptive social distance.This paper introduced time and money to the research of conformity,and revealed the effect that activating time(vs.money)has on individuals' conformity and as well as the mechanism.The results of this study also provide a certain practical insight to businesses enterprises and consumers as time and money can exert influence on consumers' behavior.