Nothing spreads like fear: effects of mortality salience caused by COVID-19 on consumption habits of consumers whose self-esteem comes from virtue or appearance

Abstract

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?