The Influence And Mechanism Of Residential Mobility And Decision-Making Style On Behavior Of "Buy Less And Buy Better"

In order to practice the concept of sustainable development,a large number of enterprises began to advocate the consumption concept of "buy less,buy better" rather than "buy more and buy times" in their marketing propaganda.Although the consumption concept of "buy less,buy better" has been praised by enterprises and consumers,the academic research on the consumption concept of "buy less,buy better" is still in its infancy.What factors will promote or inhibit consumers to "buy less and buy better" in consumption,and what is the internal mechanism? These questions have not been fully answered by academia.Based on previous studies on residential mobility,decision-making style,waste aversion,and less-for-better behavior,this paper establishes a research framework on how residential mobility and individual decision-making style jointly affect consumers’ willingness or behavior to "buy less for better",and explores the intermediary mechanism behind it.In this paper,5 studies,including 1 questionnaire survey(Study 1),3 laboratory experiments(Study 2-4)and 1 field experiment(Study 5),were conducted to test the two hypotheses and exclude alternative explanations.In study 1,a questionnaire survey was adopted to measure residential mobility,decision-making style,willingness to buy less,real purchasing status of consumers and demographic information of the subjects in turn,and to preliminatively establish the joint influence of residential mobility and decision-making style on consumers’ willingness to buy less,i.e.to test hypothesis 1.In study 2,residential mobility was manipulated by word selection and sentence construction using laboratory experiments,and Shiv et al.(1999)’s research was used for reference to indirectly activate consumers’ emotion/rational decision-making style by manipulating high and low cognitive load,hoping to verify the causal relationship between variables in a strict experimental environment.Similar to study 2,study 3 changed the experimental materials in the product selection task,and set two versions of the questionnaire,A(high-grade product on the left)and B(high-grade product on the right),to reduce the interference of product presentation position.Meanwhile,in order to eliminate the extra noise caused by high and low cognitive load in study 2,Study 3 measures different types of decision-making styles through two questions to further verify the interaction of residential mobility and decision-making style on consumers’ willingness to buy less.The three studies above ensure the robustness of the main effect,that is,when consumers adopt a rational decision-making style,high(vs.Low residential mobility will prompt consumers to show higher willingness to "buy less and buy better" and more behavior to "buy less and buy better";However,when consumers adopt the emotional decision-making style,residential mobility does not affect consumers’ willingness and behavior to "buy less and buy better".Studies 4 and 5 further explored the underlying mechanism of this effect in laboratory and field Settings,respectively.First,Study 4 manipulated residential mobility and decision style through episodic recall paradigm and writing task,respectively,and measured waste aversion to verify its mediating role.At the same time,the alternative explanations of durability value and price quality belief are excluded.Secondly,in study 5,field experiments were carried out by the activity of a cultural and creative store in a comprehensive university in the opening season to collect consumers’ real purchasing choices,and hypothesis 2 was confirmed by manipulating the waste aversion and duplication verification intermediary mechanism.That is,when the cues associated with waste aversion are not activated in the marketing context,rational decision makers will respond to high(vs.Low)"buy less,buy better" when residential mobility;However,when the cues related to waste aversion were activated in the marketing environment,rational decision makers showed no difference in purchase preference under high and low residential mobility.Based on five studies,this paper discusses the common influence of residential mobility,a social ecological factor,and individual decision-making style on consumers’ willingness or behavior to buy less or better,as well as the psychological mechanism behind it.Theoretically,this paper contributes a positive psychological result to the study of residential mobility,and examines the joint influence of residential mobility and decision-making style on their willingness and behavior to buy less,and provides a new prevariable for the study of "buying less,buying better".At the same time,this paper discusses how residential mobility and decision-making style affect consumers’ willingness and behavior to buy less,which can expand consumers’ understanding of waste aversion.In practice,this paper provides practical enlightenment for the market segmentation and sustainable development of high-end products.It suggests that enterprises need to consider the influence of consumers’ past moving experience on the concept and behavior of "buy less buy better",and provides theoretical basis for the government to guide consumers to practice the value concept of "less exquisite".