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This research aims to investigate how consumers’ authentic pride versus hubristic pride affects different construal levels of mind-sets and subsequent product evaluation by activating local versus global cognitive appraisal tendencies. Furthermore, this research also examines how lay theories impact the effects of pride on construal levels and how power moderates the effect of hubristic versus authentic pride on product preferences varying in construal levels.

Drawing on cognitive appraisal and construal level theories, this research conducts eight experimental studies to test the hypotheses with an ANOVA, bootstrap analysis and binary logistic regression analysis. The details of the experiments are presented in the paper.

The results show that people feeling authentic (hubristic) pride dominantly adopt a lower (higher) level of construal, and consequently put more weight on feasibility over desirability (desirability over feasibility) attributes. Authentic pride’s inclination to appeal behavior-specific appraisals triggers local appraisal tendencies and bestows lower construal levels, whereas hubristic pride’s inclination to connect the entire self triggers global appraisal tendencies and confers higher construal levels. Incremental (vs entity) theorists are likely to attribute the pride experience to their efforts (traits), and thus feel authentic (hubristic) pride. Furthermore, the product preferences of people experiencing authentic vs hubristic pride depend on their power state.

Notwithstanding the importance of this research, it is worthwhile to note some of its limitations to encourage future research. First, eight studies in the lab were conducted, but no real behavior study was conducted. Although there is a high correlation between the results of lab studies and those of real behavior studies, the authors encourage future researches to elicit the consumers’ pride in the actual consumption situation using a real behavior study. Furthermore, this research mainly focuses on pride, and does not examine other positive emotions, e.g. happiness. Therefore, the authors encourage future research to examine other positive emotions.

The findings suggest that it is appropriate to use construal levels to match consumers’ pride types. In fact, marketers can induce hubristic pride or authentic pride in ads by simply using words or sentences (“feeling proud because of your hard work” or “feeling proud, you are so superior and remarkably unique”), and present either higher- or lower-level construal of desired behaviors to improve advertising effects.

The research contributes to literature by documenting how hubristic/authentic pride can affect distinct construal levels via activating global/local appraisal tendencies. And this research thoroughly illustrates the mechanism by which hubristic/authentic pride activates global versus local appraisal tendencies. More importantly, this research finds how lay theories affect construal level given a pride experience and it also corroborates the moderating effects of power in the proposed relationship, which establish the boundary conditions of the effects of prides on construal levels.

Today, digital piracy remains a growing challenge for legislators and businesses operating in the entertainment industry. For these reasons, policymakers place significant efforts in reducing piracy activities through copyright enforcement policies. Yet, the effectiveness of these frameworks remains questionable since empirical evidence offers countervailing insights. For these reasons, this study adopts a demand-side approach to investigate how users' emotional reactions to the copyright enforcement policy influence their digital piracy-related judgments and intention.

The author used a scenario-based approach to test the hypotheses and surveyed 262 users who actively stream movies and TV shows.

By drawing on the appraisal tendency framework, the author finds that among individuals experiencing fear due to the copyright enforcement policy, there is a decreasing intention to continue using illegal streaming services. On the contrary, individuals experiencing indignation are more likely to have increased intention to use illegal streaming services. On top of this, we reveal indirect effects by mediating individuals' vulnerability to sanctions (fear path) and subjective norms (indignation path) as judgments cues.

The author contributes to digital piracy literature in two ways with the study. First, the author unfolds the affective background that explains the emergence of deterrence or defiance effects when users respond to the copyright enforcement policy. Thus, the author shows that fear is a trigger for decreasing while indignation increases the usage of illegal streaming services. Second, through the appraisal tendency framework, the author enriches the literature by theorizing and providing empirical evidence on how previously established vulnerability to sanctions and subjective norms reinforce affective influences on encouraging or discouraging digital piracy intentions. Overall, the findings also provide policymakers with original insights on designing their copyright enforcement tools to combat digital piracy further.

This study examines the interplay between media-induced emotional crisis framing (anger vs sadness) and message sidedness of crisis response on publics’ attribution of crisis responsibility as well as subsequent company evaluation and supportive behavioral intention.

A 2 (emotion: anger vs sadness) x 2 (crisis response: one-sided vs two-sided) online experiment was conducted among 161 participants in the USA.

Results showed that anger-inducing media framing of the crisis elicited higher levels of crisis responsibility attribution and more negative company evaluation, compared with sadness-inducing media framing. One-sided message response was more effective than two-sided message response in lowering attribution of crisis responsibility when sadness was induced, but no difference was found under the anger-induced condition. Attribution of crisis responsibility fully mediated the effects of emotional crisis framing on company evaluation and supportive behavioral intention toward the company.

This study is among the first to examine the interaction effect between emotional media framing and response message sidedness in an ambiguous crisis. Drawing on the interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks, this study integrates the situational crisis communication theory, appraisal-tendency framework and message sidedness in persuasion literature. As such, it contributes to theoretical development in crisis communication and offers communication managers guidance on how to effectively address emotionally framed crises.

Today, contactless businesses are becoming part of the “new normal” in daily life. Augmented reality-based services (ARBS) thus provide a mechanism for contactless commerce, offering customers access to sensory experiences, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, privacy can be a key concern when consumers decide whether to continue using ARBS. Thus, drawing on the Appraisal Tendency Framework (ATF), the study aims to examine how augmentation quality (Aug-Q), discrete emotions (joy and frustration) and privacy perceptions influence users' ARBS continuing use intention.

A survey methodology with a well-designed online questionnaire was used for data collection. The data were analyzed using a structural equation model with Amos v. 22.0 software.

This study demonstrated that Aug-Q had a significant positive impact on joy and a significant negative impact on frustration. Additionally, joy was positively associated with the perception of privacy benefits and ARBS continuing use intention, while frustration was negatively associated with the perception of privacy benefits and ARBS continuing use intention. The results also indicate that (perceived privacy risks) PPR–benefits predict the likelihood of ARBS continuing use intention.

This study enhances understanding of users' ARBS continuing use intention from an integrative perspective based on the ATF, thus identifying the Aug-Q-induced emotions that subsequently influence privacy trade-offs and predict users' ARBS continuing use intention. The results provide evidence that privacy and emotions can be key determinants when consumers decide whether to continue using ARBS. The findings of this research may be beneficial for commercial companies in preventing the loss of ARBS users.

Purpose – Extensive research in the area of consumer behavior has documented the “Country of Origin Effect,” which identifies country of origin as an important decision variable in evaluating products and services. Past research has mostly assumed that country of origin effect is driven by the performance of the products originating in that country. However, consumers can also form opinions about countries based on exposure to information that is unrelated to the product and may have roots in macro factors such as history, culture, and politics. These emotions, while extraneous to the product, can also influence product evaluations along with performance-related country information.Design/methodology/approach – This review examines research addressing both performance and emotional perceptions related to country of origin.Findings – This review presents an integrating framework termed “Nation Equity” to systematically understand and examine the influence of various dimensions of country of origin on consumer decision making.

This study aims to investigate how gratitude, as compared to pride, can leverage the effectiveness of cause-related marketing, particularly a donation-based promotion. Drawing upon the appraisal tendency framework, this study establishes the underlying process driving these emotion effects. It also examines the moderating role of product type (hedonic vs utilitarian).

Five studies are conducted to test the predictions. Importantly, this study examines the predicted emotion effects across different sources of affect (dispositional, incidental and integral), different subject populations (students and Amazon Mechanical Turk panel) and different product categories (water bottle, chocolate and printer), leading to robust and generalizable findings.

Results show that gratitude (vs pride) increases the likelihood of purchasing a product with a donation-based promotion. This effect is mediated by gratitude’s other-responsibility appraisal and, in turn, increased reciprocity concerns (a serial mediation). Further, this study finds that how the gratitude (vs pride) effect is attenuated when the product is hedonic (but not utilitarian) in nature.

Past study on emotion and cause-related marketing has emphasized the role of negative emotions such as guilt. This study provides empirical evidence on the potential benefit of using positive emotions such as gratitude in cause-related marketing.

The implications of this study can benefit marketers by highlighting the use of gratitude appeals in their cause-related marketing campaigns.

The findings of the present research are significant because they highlight the potential role of a discrete positive emotion – gratitude – in leveraging the effectiveness of cause-related marketing and establish the underlying process driving this effect.

This study explores the decision-making powers of Australian female consumers in the financial product market. More precisely, it examines how the integrative effects of rationality, emotions and personality traits influence the decision-making powers of Australian female consumers when making financial product purchase decisions.

The study employs a quantitative research approach, utilising a survey strategy. The proposed conceptual model was tested using structural equation modelling (AMOS) on a valid 357 responses from Australian female consumers.

The findings revealed that rationality, self-efficacy and impulsivity have a positive impact on the decision-making powers of Australian female consumers. Besides this, self-efficacy and anxiety had significant moderating effects on the decision-making power of Australian female consumers when buying financial products, whereas anger and impulsivity were found to have no moderating effects.

The study offers understanding on the role of emotions and personality traits in financial decision-making, which can help financial institutions design sound products and services that can also ensure consumers' overall well-being.

Informed by the theoretical notions of the appraisal-tendency framework (ATF) and emotion-imbued choice model (EIC), the study makes a unique contribution by investigating the impact of rationality, emotions and personality traits on the decision-making powers of female consumers in the Australian financial product market.

Choice deferral (making no choice at all) is a common phenomenon, especially when individuals face a difficult decision. This is further exacerbated in the presence of negative incidental emotions which can have a wide-ranging influence on various aspects of decision-making. Previous research suggests that process (vs outcome) accountability might be more effective at mitigating the effect of irrelevant factors. This paper aims to examine whether accountability attenuates emotion effects on choice and examines the differences in the efficacy of the two accountability types.

The paper uses the appraisal tendency framework to propose differences between same valenced emotions on choice deferral and predicts the moderating role of process versus outcome accountability. Two experiments are conducted to test the predictions and the results analyzed using logistic regression.

The authors find that outcome and process accountability have different moderating effects on emotion and choice deferral relationship: under outcome accountability, angry individuals are more likely to defer choice while under process accountability, differences in choice across emotion conditions are attenuated. As predicted, differences between anger and fear on the certainty appraisal and thereby information processing, mediate the effects of emotion on choice deferral in the outcome (but not process) condition.

This research studies the intersection of two developing research streams, affect and accountability, by focusing on specific affective states (anger and fear) and specific accountability types (outcome and process) in the important context of decision avoidance in consumer behavior. Thus, theoretical understanding in both domains is advanced and the benefits of specific accountability types clarified. Key implications for consumers and future research directions are also discussed.

With the upgrade of natural language interaction technology, the simulation extension of intelligent voice assistants (IVAs) and the uncertainty of products and services have received more and more attention. However, most of the existing research focuses on investigating the application of theories to explain consumer behavior related to intention to use and adopt IVAs, while ignoring the impact of its privacy issues on consumer resistance. This article especially examines the negative impact of artificial intelligence-based IVAs’ privacy concerns on consumer resistance, and studies the mediating effect of perceived creepiness in the context of privacy cynicism and privacy paradox and the moderating effect of anthropomorphized roles of IVAs and perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) of IVAs’ companies. The demographic variables are also included.

Based on the theory of human–computer interaction (HCI), this study addresses the consumer privacy concerns of IVAs, builds a model of the influence mechanism on consumer resistance, and then verifies the mediating effect of perceived creepiness and the moderating effect of anthropomorphized roles of IVAs and perceived CSR of IVAs companies. This research explores underlying mechanism with three experiments.

It turns out that consumers’ privacy concerns are related to their resistance to IVAs through perceived creepiness. The servant (vs. partner) anthropomorphized role of IVAs is likely to induce more privacy concerns and in turn higher resistance. At the same time, when the company’s CSR is perceived high, the impact of the concerns of IVAs’ privacy issues on consumer resistance will be weakened, and the intermediary mechanism of perceiving creepiness in HCI and anthropomorphism of new technology are further explained and verified. The differences between different age and gender are also revealed in the study.

The research conclusions have strategic reference significance for enterprises to build the design framework of IVAs and formulate the response strategy of IVAs’ privacy concerns. And it offers implications for researchers and closes the research gap of IVAs from the perspective of innovation resistance.

As one of the largest industries in the global economy, the fashion industry has emphasized the symbolic and aspirational features of its products while maximizing the efficiency of its manufacturing processes. However, the labor-intensive and competitive nature of the industry has meant that brand moral transgressions often occur. This study aims to understand the role of moral emotions and concerns (i.e. perceived spillover) caused by different moral transgressions and explain consumer anti-brand behaviors (i.e. negative word of mouth [WOM] and patronage cessation).

Structural equation modeling was conducted to examine group differences (ethical vs social transgressions) in Study 1 (n = 584). Also, the moderation effect of moral disengagement was examined in Study 2 (n = 324).

The results indicate that, for ethical transgressions, both moral emotions and perceived spillovers explain negative behaviors while moral emotions alone explain negative WOM on social media for social transgressions. Additionally, for social transgressions, the results of Study 2 indicate a negative interaction effect of moral emotions and moral disengagement on anti-brand behavior of patronage cessation.

Based on the literature’s theoretical approach to moral crises, this paper examines the emotional and cognitive reactions of consumers to the fashion industry’s moral transgressions.