The Impact Of Passive Social Media Usage On Online Compulsive Buying:Chain Mediating Effect Of Upward Social Comparison And Envy

In the era of mobile Internet,modern people’s life has long been inseparable from social media,and how social media affects people’s life has thus triggered many scholars’ concern in various fields.At the same time,the rapid development of the Internet and e-commerce catalyzes a series of irrational consumption behaviors.Scholars have already discussed a lot on the causes of online compulsive buying and other Internet addiction behaviors,most of which believe that it is related to individual personality,psychological factors,cognition and other personal traits.Few studies have further studied the possible inducement of using social media.Therefore,this study mainly explored the influence of passive social media usage’s influence on online compulsive buying,proposed a model of the influence mechanism,collected nearly 400 samples through online questionnaire survey,and used SPSS22.0 for data analysis.Finally,the hypothesis proposed and the influence mechanism was verified.The following conclusions are drawn:(1)Passive social media usage positively affects online compulsive buying;(2)Passive social media usage positively affects upward social comparison;(3)Passive social media usage positively affects envy;(4)Passive social media usage positively affects online compulsive buying through the independent mediating effect of envy;(5)Passive social media usage positively affects online compulsive buying through the chain mediating effect of upward social comparison and envy;(6)Passive social media usage does not positively affects online compulsive buying through the independent mediating effect of upward social comparison.By confirming the influence mechanism of passive social media usage on online compulsive buying,this study enriched the research on causes of online compulsive buying,and also brought some enlightenment for rational use of social media and control of irrational consumption behavior.When using social media,people should rationally view others’ sharing to avoid unnecessary upward social comparison and negative emotions.At the same time,the passive use of social media should be reduced,instead,self-presentation and online interaction should be increased to improve self-esteem and mental health.The most important thing is that people should establish a rational and healthy consumption concept to avoid online compulsive buying.