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The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the determinants and consequences of psychological reactance in the online shopping context. Leveraging the psychological reactance and self-congruity theories, functional and symbolic discrepancies enhance the psychological reactance toward online shopping. In addition, trustworthiness moderates the impact of online customers attitude ambivalence on their psychological reactance.

The authors conduct an empirical study on online customer cognitive factors. In this research paper, the postpositivism research view is used. The Smart PLS-SEM is used to analyze the data.

The current study findings reveal that self-concept and operational incongruence (i.e. symbolic and functional) are the main factors that lead to psychological reactance and resulting in online shopping hate. Poor website quality and other matters are so significant they create functional incongruence. Moreover, low trustworthiness strengthens psychological reactance in the online shopping hate context.

This study extends the psychological reactance and self-congruence theories to online shopping. Previously, literature has extensively studied the social commerce intention.

This study aims to investigate the psychological process of intertemporal choices between larger-later and smaller-sooner monetary options. Prior research showed consumer impatience – a tendency to prefer a smaller-sooner option over a larger-later option. This research identifies an individual difference that predicts patience and mediators that explain the underlying mechanism.

Two studies are conducted. Study 1 examines whether the implicit theory of intelligence consumers endorse (i.e. entity theory vs incremental theory) constitutes an antecedent of patience and whether their thoughts regarding anticipated purchase with the chosen monetary option (i.e. hedonic versus utilitarian purchase) mediate the relationship. Study 2 analyzes whether psychological reactance toward larger-later options is a mediator in this relationship using a perceived threat to freedom and affect as reactance indicators.

Entity-oriented consumers exhibited less patience than incremental-oriented consumers, especially when anticipating a hedonic purchase. Moreover, entity-oriented consumers perceived a threat to freedom from larger-later options more strongly – this enhanced perception influenced patience through two routes. One route is that the perceived threat to freedom leads to more consideration of a hedonic purchase rather than a utilitarian purchase, thereby decreasing patience. The other route is that the perceived threat to freedom elicits a stronger negative affect, resulting in lower patience.

Findings of this research shed light on the understanding of patience. They demonstrate that consumers’ implicit theory orientation is a crucial individual difference that can explain patience. Also, demonstrating the mediating roles of anticipated purchase using the hedonic/utilitarian classification and psychological reactance expanded literature by showing how they internally interact.

Reactance theory is applied to investigate consumer responses to “buy local” campaigns initiated by government to counteract the effects of an economic crisis, using the COVID-19 pandemic as an illustrative context.

A conceptual model is developed, aimed at revealing the extent to which “buy local” campaigns – explicitly justified by the need to fight an economic crisis – are likely to lead to (a) compliance (i.e. support for local products/retailers) or (b) freedom restoration (i.e. support for foreign products/retailers). The model is subsequently tested on samples of German (N = 265) and Italian (N = 268) consumers.

“Buy local” campaigns are likely to generate reactance amongst consumers and such reactance can lead to both non-compliance and, albeit less so, freedom restoration outcomes. At the same time, consumer ethnocentrism acts as a countervailing influence by attenuating the effects of generated reactance and its undesirable outcomes.

Psychological reactance theory offers a novel perspective for conceptually approaching the likely responses of consumers towards “buy local” campaigns and the empirical findings support the use of the theory in this context.

Policymakers seeking to encourage consumers to support the local economy during times of an economic crisis need to be aware that “buy local” campaigns may, against their intended communication goals, result in non-compliance as well as consumer responses in the opposite direction. Thus, the reactance-generating potential of such campaigns needs to be explicitly considered at the planning/implementation stage.

The findings confirm the relevance of reactance theory as a conceptual lens for studying the effects of “buy local” campaigns and have important implications for domestic/foreign firms as well as for policy makers seeking to encourage consumers to support the local economy during times of an economic crisis.

Corporations are confronted with growing demands to take a stand on socio-political issues, i.e. corporate social advocacy (CSA), which affects their reputation in the public. Companies use different CSA message strategies, including calling the public to support and act on the issue they advocate. Using reactance theory, the authors investigate the impact of CSA messages with a call to action on corporate reputation in the case of a company's gender equality initiative.

A one-factorial (CSA message with or without a call to action) between-subjects experiment was conducted by surveying 172 individuals living in Switzerland. The CSA messages were created in the context of gender equality.

The authors' study indicates that CSA messages with a call to action compared to those without overall harmed corporate reputation due to individuals' reactance, which is higher for CSA messages with a call to action, negatively affecting corporate reputation. The impact of the CSA message strategy with a call to action on corporate reputation remains significant after controlling for issue alignment and political leaning.

Communicating about socio-political issues, especially taking a stand, is a significant challenge for corporations in an increasingly polarized society and has often led to backlash, boycotts and damage to corporate reputation. This study shows that the possible adverse effects of advocating for socio-political issues can be related to reactance. It emphasizes that companies advocating for contested issues must be more cautious about the message strategy than the issue itself.

The purpose of this paper is to present a model depicting the relationship between the behavioral intention of tourists in the conditions prevailing during a pandemic and other variables.

In constructing the research procedure, two measurements of tourist behavioral intention were taken into account, which were taken far apart in time. In verifying the developed model, the results of surveys of 1,615 people carried out in June 2021 and 917 people carried out in December 2021 were considered.

As a result of the habituation process, tourists show greater acceptance of the restrictions.

Information on the basis of which companies make management decisions plays a significant role in the creation of company value. In the tourism sector, the information concerns primarily consumer behavior.

Changes over time in risk perception, health protection motivation, and reactance due to perceived pandemic-related restrictions were taken into account in the context of behavioral intention towards tourism.

This study takes a unique perspective on the role of psychological contract breach, turnover intentions and off-the-job embeddedness in influencing the behavior of reluctant stayers. More specifically, reluctant stayers are defined as employees who are high on turnover intentions and off-the-job embeddedness. It proposes that employees who perceive psychological contract breaches are more likely to develop turnover intentions. Such breaches are expected to indirectly spur organizational deviance, with turnover intentions as the mediator. Finally, a moderated-mediation model is proposed where off-the-job embeddedness is expected to moderate the relationship between turnover intentions and organizational deviance.

Data were collected from 231 employees across the energy sector within the Caribbean nation of Trinidad, using a two-wave research design and a path-analytic approach.

The findings provide support for the propositions that perceived psychological contract breach predicts turnover intentions and that turnover intentions mediate the contract breach–organizational deviance relationship. Further, the proposition that off-the-job embeddedness moderates the relationship between turnover intentions and organizational deviance was supported by the sample data. Consequently, reluctant stayers (employees with high turnover intentions and high off-the-job embeddedness) responded to perceived psychological contract breach with higher levels of organizational deviance when they were more deeply embedded.

Limited studies have explored the behaviors of reluctant stayers, and hence this study adds to research on this emerging classification of employees. Furthermore, no study has yet explored the role of high turnover intentions and off-the-job embeddedness in creating reluctant stayers.

The deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in travel and tourism has received much attention in the wake of the pandemic. While societal adoption of AI has accelerated, it also raises some trust challenges. Literature on trust in AI is scant, especially regarding the vulnerabilities faced by different stakeholders to inform policy and practice. This work proposes a framework to understand the use of AI technologies from the perspectives of institutional and the self to understand the formation of trust in the mandated use of AI-based technologies in travelers.

An empirical investigation using partial least squares-structural equation modeling was employed on responses from 209 users. This paper considered factors related to the self (perceptions of self-threat, privacy empowerment, trust propensity) and institution (regulatory protection, corporate privacy responsibility) to understand the formation of trust in AI use for travelers.

Results showed that self-threat, trust propensity and regulatory protection influence trust in users on AI use. Privacy empowerment and corporate responsibility do not.

Insights from the past studies on AI in travel and tourism are limited. This study advances current literature on affordance and reactance theories to provide a better understanding of what makes travelers trust the mandated use of AI technologies. This work also demonstrates the paradoxical effects of self and institution on technologies and their relationship to trust. For practice, this study offers insights for enhancing adoption via developing trust.

This paper aims to study how retailers moving from a multi- (in-store and online) to a single- (online) channel impacts consumers’ retailer and channel choices.

The authors conduct two scenario-based experimental studies to examine consumers’ in-store and online channel shopping preferences and behavioural intentions (i.e. channel and retailer choices) when their preferred focal retailer’s physical store closes.

The findings show that when a focal retailer removes its physical store location, consumers with a strong preference for shopping online have a greater likelihood of shopping online. Their loyalty towards the retailer explains this relationship but is conditional on low levels of reactance. When reactance is high, consumers with a strong preference for shopping online are more likely to switch to a competitor.

This research paper bridges the intersection between B2B and B2C literature to understand how retailers’ channel-related supply chain decisions affect downstream consumer shopping behaviour.

Using the lenses of social exchange and reactance theories, this study examines the relationships between abusive supervision and both turnover intentions and job satisfaction. The moderating role of employee depression in the relationship between abusive supervision and these specific work outcomes is also investigated, by incorporating the conservation of resources theory.

Quantitative data were collected from a sample of 221 frontline retail employees, across shopping malls in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad. A 3-step multiple hierarchical regression analysis was performed to test the relationships.

The findings provided support for the propositions that abusive supervision predicts job satisfaction and turnover intentions, respectively. Employee depression moderated the relationship between abusive supervision and job satisfaction but did not moderate the relationship between abusive supervision and turnover intentions.

While existing research has explored the relationships between abusive supervision, job satisfaction and turnover intentions, limited studies have investigated the moderating role of employee depression. This study contributes to understanding this pervasive workplace issue by investigating a relatively unexplored moderating effect.

COVID-19 disrupted the lives of consumers across the globe, and the retail sector has been one of the hardest hits. The impact of COVID-19 on consumers' retail choice behaviour and retailers' responses has been studied in detail through multiple lenses. Now that the effect of COVID-19 is abating, there is a need to consolidate the learnings during the lifecycle of COVID-19 and set the agenda for research post-COVID-19.

Scopus database was searched to cull out academic papers published between March 2020 and June 6, 2022, using keywords; shopping behaviour, retailing, consumer behaviour, and retail channel choice along with COVID-19 (171 journals, 357 articles). Bibliometric analysis followed by selective content analysis was conducted.

COVID-19 was a black swan event that impacted consumers' psychology, leading to reversible and irreversible changes in retail consumer behaviour worldwide. Research on changes in consumer behaviour and consumption patterns has been mapped to the different stages of the COVID-19 lifecycle. Relevant research questions and potential theoretical lenses have been proposed for further studies.

This paper collates, classifies and organizes the extant research in retail from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It identifies three retail consumption themes: short-term, long-term reversible and long-term irreversible changes. Research agenda related to the retailer and consumer behaviour is identified; for each of the three categories, facilitating the extraction of pertinent research questions for post-COVID-19 studies.