Consumption is driven by different strong motivations, like emotion, identity, and social
connection. But the values, habits, and norms that shape what we consume and how we
consume could shift. Currently, we are experiencing a pandemic which is expected to
have an impact on consumer behavior in the future. Because the pandemic, COVID-19,
is causing mortality salience on people and it is previously shown in many literary
articles that mortality salience affects consumer choice. Previous studies ...
Consumption is driven by different strong motivations, like emotion, identity, and social
connection. But the values, habits, and norms that shape what we consume and how we
consume could shift. Currently, we are experiencing a pandemic which is expected to
have an impact on consumer behavior in the future. Because the pandemic, COVID-19,
is causing mortality salience on people and it is previously shown in many literary
articles that mortality salience affects consumer choice. Previous studies provide many
results showing events that remind individuals of death to engender existential anxiety
and one major way to cope with it is to bolster self-esteem. This paper examines the
effects of mortality salience caused by COVID-19 on the consumption behavior of
people whose self-esteem is based on virtue or appearance. It investigates whether
increased mortality salience will push consumers with high virtue to buy more
environmentally conscious products while consumers with appearance as self-esteem
domain will buy more luxurious products. In the first step, the paper explains the
theoretical development of the relevant aspects of mortality salience and self-esteem.
Intending to quantify this effect, the second part of the paper explains the experiment
done and uses test statistics to analyze the outcomes. Lastly, it shows the results which
provide evidence that mortality salience will lead to more environmentally conscious
consumption from people whose self-esteem is more inclined to virtue. Whereas
mortality salience did not increase the luxury buying behavior of people with high
body-esteem and raised the following question: Can mortality salience lead people to
shop less?
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