Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Cultural Tightness-looseness On Consumer Creativity

With the development of Internet technology,the ways and channels for consumers to express their creativity are becoming more and more diversified,making consumers more eager to show their creativity,and at the same time,companies are eager to stimulate and use consumers’ creativity to improve their competitive advantage.Consumer creativity,as an important part of consumers’ daily consumption behavior,is of great importance to both consumers and companies.Therefore,how to comprehensively understand consumer creativity is an urgent theoretical and practical problem to be solved.The rapid development of information technology has given birth to a large number of global creative crowdsourcing platforms and creative sharing platforms,making global consumers have the opportunity to participate in a variety of creative activities to express creativity,which in turn can obtain material and spiritual rewards.Cross-cultural research has identified national culture as an important factor influencing the expression of consumer creativity when engaging in creative activities in a global context.Meanwhile,the literature on consumer culture also point out that the expression of consumer creativity is deeply “imprinted” with culture.The socio-cultural environment is not only a key trigger for consumer creativity,but also an invisible force in shaping value creation in the consumption process.The relationship between culture and creativity has historically received much attention from scholars,and although studies have examined the impact of culture on creativity,we do not yet know the mechanisms by which cultural tightness-looseness affects different types of consumer creativity.Accordingly,this paper focuses on the influence of cultural tightnesslooseness on different types of consumer creativity from social norms perspective,using questionnaire survey method and situational experiment method,and further reveals the influence mechanism of cultural tightness-looseness on consumer creativity from psychological adaptation perspective,as well as further reveals the boundary conditions of the influence mechanism of cultural tightness-looseness on consumer creativity from cultural fit perspective based on self-determination theory.The results show that(1)consumers with cultural tightness orientation exhibit higher levels of incremental creativity but lower levels of radical creativity.(2)Adaption-Innovation cognitive style play a mediating role in the effects of cultural tightness-looseness on different types of consumer creativity.Specifically,cultural tightness positively predicts incremental creativity but negatively predicts radical creativity through adaptive cognitive style.(3)Consumer autonomy plays a moderating role in the mechanism of cultural tightness-looseness influence on different types of consumer creativity.That is,for consumers with low autonomy,the effect of cultural tightness-looseness on both incremental and radical creativity through adaption-innovation cognitive styles is significant.Specifically,the effect of cultural tightness on both incremental and radical creativity through adaptive cognitive styles is significant.Whereas for consumers with high autonomy,the effect of cultural tightnesslooseness on both incremental and radical creativity through adaptioninnovation cognitive style is no longer significant.The findings of this research not only theoretically reveal the mechanisms and boundary conditions of the influence of cultural tightness-looseness on different types of consumer creativity,but also practically provide theoretical guidance for companies to tap and utilize consumer creativity for value co-creation,as well as provide theoretical references for consumers to learn and express different types of creativity.