Search Results (70)

With the booming of cross-border live streaming e-commerce, this study examined the influence mechanism of cross-border live streaming interactions on consumers’ impulsive purchase intention based on the timulus–organism–response (SOR) model. Two independent psychological organism mediators are proposed, immersive experience and foreign cultural identity, and AI (artificial intelligence) enablement acts as a cross-layer moderating variable. Three core dimensions of cross-border live streaming interaction (consumer–product, consumer–consumer, consumer–anchor) are refined, and empirical tests are conducted with 620 valid questionnaires via SPSS 26.0, AMOS 28.0 and PROCESS. Results showed that consumer–product and consumer–anchor interactions exerted significant positive direct effects on impulsive purchase intention (consumer–consumer interaction’s direct effect was insignificant); both flow experience dimensions exert partial mediating effects in the paths linking consumer–product/consumer–anchor interaction to impulsive purchase intention and full mediating effects for the consumer–consumer interaction path. AI enablement positively moderates the effect of live streaming interactions on flow experience and the effect of immersive experience on impulsive purchase intention, but its moderating effect on the foreign cultural identity–impulsive purchase intention link was insignificant. This study advanced the research on cross-border live streaming consumer behavior and offered targeted practical suggestions for platform optimization with AI technology while enriching the SOR model’s application in cross-cultural consumption scenarios. Full article

The housing sector is an important pillar of the economy. Understanding the trend and factors influencing it is essential for effective policy formulation and purchasing decisions. The objectives of this study are to assess the performance trajectory of the Australian housing market and to identify key macroeconomic factors influencing it over the past two decades. The presence of structural shifts in the housing market due to changing economic conditions highlights the importance of examining both short-run adjustments and long-run equilibrium relationships; however, limited recent studies have investigated these evolving dynamics, which this study addresses by employing the cointegration and Vector Error Correction Model (VECM). Empirical findings indicated the dynamics of previous period RPPI, interest rates, population growth, COVID-19 dummy, and adjustment components (ECT) are affecting housing market dynamics but with effects varying across different lag periods. On the other hand, the long-run estimates reported variables including population growth, the COVID-19 pandemic, household income, and unemployment rate have a significant impact on RPPI at the 5% significance level. The finding of the error correction model suggests a gradual adjustment of short-term deviation with ECTt-1 = −0.078 towards the long-term equilibrium quarterly. To further validate the robustness of the results, an Impulse Response Function (IRF) analysis was performed. The empirical findings are valuable as they provide insights that assist policymakers in formulating housing policies and support investors and purchasers in making informed decisions. Full article

Background/Objectives: In a recent meta-analysis of 1186 empirical studies, results showed that impulsivity may be one of the most important predictors of substance use. As such, the current study examined the association between an emerging psychological construct in the military veteran population, moral injury, and impulsivity—a construct found in high prevalence among military veterans. Methods: In this cross-sectional pilot study, 31 veterans completed the Moral Injury Purchase Task (MIPT), a behavioral economic assessment of sensitivity to moral injury–related relief, and the Monetary Choice Questionnaire. Demand indices for moral injury were derived, and delay discounting was quantified using area under the curve (AUC) and effective delay (ED50). Results: Participants were primarily White and male, with an average age of 38.55 years. Multivariable linear regression models adjusted for age, race, and sex. Higher moral injury intensity (b = 0.002, SE = 0.001, p = 0.04) and clinically significant moral injury (b = 0.17, SE = 0.07, p = 0.02) were associated with greater delay discounting AUCs, indicating increased preference for immediate outcomes. ED50 was not significantly associated with moral injury indices. Conclusions: Results suggest that moral injury may be linked to contextually driven shifts toward immediate reinforcement. Practitioners should consider including delay discounting in clinical settings. Full article

As livestreaming e-commerce rapidly expands, impulsive buying has become increasingly prominent in online consumption. However, although prior studies have examined impulsive buying in general e-commerce contexts, little attention has been paid to impulsive buying in sports livestreaming e-commerce. Drawing on the stimulus-organism-response framework and Dual-System Theory, this study examined the associations among consumer herding tendency, perceived scarcity, hedonic benefits of sales promotion tools, pleasure emotion, trust in seller, and impulsive buying. A cross-sectional self-report survey was conducted with 775 university students in eastern China with prior purchase experience in sports livestreaming e-commerce, and the model was analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results showed that consumer herding tendency, perceived scarcity, and hedonic benefits of sales promotion tools were positively associated with pleasure emotion and trust in seller. Perceived scarcity showed the strongest path coefficient with trust in seller. Trust in seller and pleasure emotion were positively associated with impulsive buying, whereas self-control was negatively associated with impulsive buying. Specific indirect associations through trust in seller were generally stronger than those through pleasure emotion. The moderating effect of self-control was not significant, and the gender-based multi-group analysis revealed no significant differences between male and female consumers. Given the cross-sectional self-report design, these findings should be interpreted as associations rather than causal effects. Full article

This study examines how live-streaming cues influence impulsive purchase intention in fresh-fruit e-commerce, where consumers face substantial quality uncertainty and limited opportunities for pre-purchase inspection. Drawing on the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S-O-R) framework, we examine five stimuli—anchor professionalism, anchor interactivity, visual attractiveness, price discount, and scarcity—and test whether perceived value (cognitive) and positive emotions (affective) operate as parallel mediators. Based on survey data from 353 Chinese consumers, the results show that anchor professionalism, anchor interactivity, price discount, and scarcity are positively associated with impulsive purchase intention both directly and indirectly through perceived value and positive emotions, whereas visual presentation follows a different pattern. Contrary to the common assumption that vividness primarily triggers emotional impulse, visual attractiveness does not exhibit a robust direct effect on purchase intention; instead, its influence is transmitted dominantly through cognitive perceived value rather than affective positive emotions. This finding suggests that, in high-uncertainty perishable categories, vivid presentation is more consequential when it helps consumers evaluate product value than when it merely stimulates affective reactions. The study offers targeted implications for S-O-R theory and provides practical guidance for platform design and promotional disclosure in real-time e-commerce. Full article

This study maps the intellectual structure and thematic evolution of buy now, pay later (BNPL) research published between 2010 and 2025, with particular attention to how impulsive buying and post-purchase regret are positioned within the broader BNPL knowledge domain. Drawing on an integrated bibliometric science mapping and focused behavioral synthesis approach, the study first mapped a broad Scopus dataset of BNPL-related digital consumer credit and deferred payment research published between 2010 and 2025. This dataset was used for performance analysis and VOSviewer-based science mapping. A second, narrower PRISMA-guided screening process was then applied to identify empirical studies that directly examined BNPL-related behavioral and psychological outcomes, resulting in 13 studies retained for focused qualitative synthesis. The bibliometric findings show that BNPL scholarship expanded sharply after 2020, with research concentrated in marketing, consumer behavior, fintech, and digital commerce outlets. The science mapping results reveal a fragmented field structured around digital finance adoption, impulsive consumption, consumer vulnerability, and emerging ethical and regulatory concerns. The systematic synthesis further indicates that BNPL-related mechanisms, including installment framing, urgency cues, perceived affordability, and reduced payment salience, are consistently associated with impulsive buying tendencies. However, post-purchase regret remains underexamined and is rarely modeled as a distinct emotional outcome. By integrating bibliometric evidence with behavioral synthesis, this study clarifies how BNPL research has developed, where conceptual fragmentation remains, and why future studies should connect digital payment design, cognitive distortions, impulsive purchasing, and post-purchase emotional consequences within more comprehensive theoretical models. The study contributes by offering a structured research agenda for advancing responsible BNPL scholarship, consumer protection, and future digital finance research. Full article

This study examined differences in self-justification and symbolic consumption tendency according to levels of impulse-buying tendency among South Korean adult members of Generation Z sports consumers. Drawing on Cognitive Dissonance Theory (CDT) and Symbolic Self-Completion Theory (SSCT), the study aimed to clarify whether impulse-buying tendency functions as a meaningful basis for segmentation in sports product consumption. Data were collected from South Korean adults aged 20 years or older who had purchased sports products within the previous 12 months. For group-based comparison, participants were classified into low (n = 128) and high (n = 106) impulse-buying tendency groups using a mean-split procedure. A 29-item questionnaire assessed impulse-buying tendency (9 items), self-justification (4 items), and symbolic consumption tendency across five subdimensions (16 items). Confirmatory factor analysis supported the adequacy of the measurement model (χ²/df = 2.285, p < 0.001, IFI = 0.918, TLI = 0.906, CFI = 0.918, SRMR = 0.044, RMSEA = 0.074), with satisfactory reliability and convergent validity. MANOVA results showed that the high impulse-buying tendency group reported significantly higher levels of self-justification, self-development and reinforcement, conformity and belonging, and communication and exchange than the low group. These findings suggest that impulse-buying tendency differentiates consumers in terms of post-purchase cognitive responses and identity-related consumption patterns among adult Generation Z sports consumers. The results highlight the heterogeneity of South Korean Gen Z sports consumers and suggest that sports product marketing may benefit from more segmented strategies based on post-purchase reassurance and symbolic value. However, causal interpretations are limited by the cross-sectional design. Full article

Background: Live-streaming e-commerce has emerged as a significant retail channel, especially in the apparel industry, characterized by high impulse-driven purchase rates and elevated product returns. Reverse logistics processes associated with these returns generate considerable environmental impacts that require systematic evaluation. Methods: This study performs a gate-to-gate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) using SimaPro software, with a functional unit of 1 kg for one pair of returned jeans. Secondary inventory data were obtained primarily from the Ecoinvent database and supplemented with literature-based estimates for transport distances and packaging masses. Results: Key hotspots analyzed include transportation modes, packaging materials, and waste disposal pathways. Transportation mode selection was the dominant environmental hotspot, with air freight exhibiting the highest impacts across most midpoint and endpoint categories. Low-density polyethylene (LDPE) packaging and landfill disposal of textile waste were also major contributors to global warming, ozone formation, and resource depletion. Conclusions: The findings underscore the necessity of integrating Circular Supply Chain (CSC) principles into reverse logistics network design for live-streaming platforms. Optimizing transportation modes and packaging choices can effectively balance operational responsiveness with environmental sustainability. This study offers empirical evidence and practical decision-supporting insights for more sustainable return management in high-return digital retail environments. Full article

Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) has become a salient emotion in consumer markets shaped by social media, scarcity appeals, and social display. Yet limited research has examined FoMO as a consumption-specific emotion associated with consumer dispositions, situational cues, and post-purchase intentions. Drawing on Social Comparison Theory, Self-Determination Theory, and the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S-O-R) framework, this study examines the relationships among Materialism, Envy, Scarcity, FoMO, Impulsive Buying (IB), and Repurchase Intention (RI). Survey data from 518 Chinese consumers with prior Pop Mart purchasing experience were analyzed using PLS-SEM. The results show that Materialism, Envy, and Scarcity were positively associated with FoMO, with Scarcity showing the strongest relationship. FoMO was positively associated with IB, and IB was positively associated with RI. The results also supported three serial mediation paths, indicating that FoMO and IB served as sequential mediators between Materialism, Envy, Scarcity, and RI. This study extends FoMO research to cultural and creative product consumption and provides insight into how consumption-related emotions are associated with sustained purchase tendencies. Full article

Food waste fashion—garments produced from agricultural and food industry by-products, such as fruit peels, coffee grounds, and grape marc—represents a radical yet understudied innovation within the circular economy. This study proposes the Fashion Innovation Adoption Model, a novel framework that organizes consumer adoption of fashion innovations across three hierarchical levels: a distal level comprising sociodemographic characteristics, an intermediate cognitive–evaluative level comprising consumer decision-making styles and functional product attribute evaluations, and a proximal psychosocial level comprising attitudes, static and dynamic social norms, and past fashion purchasing behavior. The model is applied for the first time to food waste fashion as a paradigmatic case of radical circular innovation in the textile sector. Hypotheses were tested via structural equation modeling on a sample of 396 Italian consumers. Purchase intention was directly predicted by attitudes, static and dynamic norms, and general fashion purchasing, whereas sustainable fashion purchasing showed no effect. Among product attributes, only sustainability information influenced both attitudes and intentions. Perfectionism and hedonism were positively associated with intention through sustainability information, while impulsivity and habit were negatively associated with intention. Sociodemographics influenced intention only indirectly, via cognitive and normative mechanisms. These findings reveal complex pathways linking psychological profiles and perceived product attributes to circular fashion adoption, with implications for communication strategies emphasizing sustainability information and targeting heterogeneous consumer motivations. Full article

Internet advertising, while enabling unprecedented commercial reach, has become a pervasive vehicle for deceptive practices that inflict measurable harm on consumers. This study empirically investigates the structural relationships between internet advertising falsity and consumer harm by integrating analyses of the mediating role of consumer cognitive processes and the moderating role of consumer vulnerability within a unified structural framework. Survey data were collected from 600 adult consumers with online purchase experience in the Republic of Korea—an advanced digital economy characterized by exceptionally high mobile-commerce penetration, mature e-commerce infrastructure, and evolving digital consumer protection regulation—and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) with AMOS 24.0, supplemented by Hayes’ PROCESS macro Model 59 for conditional process analysis. All 13 hypotheses were supported, although path magnitudes varied substantially across falsity dimensions and mediator pathways—with direct effects ranging from β = 0.156 (false scarcity) to β = 0.224 (performance exaggeration), and indirect effects dominated by the risk assessment distortion pathway. Among the four sub-dimensions of advertising falsity—factual misrepresentation, performance exaggeration, price deception, and false scarcity—performance exaggeration exerted the strongest direct effect on consumer harm. The three cognitive mediators—perceived advertising credibility, risk assessment distortion, and purchase decision pressure—all demonstrated significant partial mediation, with risk assessment distortion emerging as the most powerful indirect pathway. All four consumer vulnerability dimensions—digital literacy level, demographic vulnerability, prior victimization experience, and impulsive buying tendency—significantly moderated the falsity–harm relationship, with low-digital-literacy consumers experiencing approximately 1.7 times the adverse effect of high-literacy counterparts. Moderated mediation analysis revealed that the conditional indirect effect for the high-vulnerability group was approximately 2.3 times that of the low-vulnerability group, confirming that the cognitive harm mechanism intensifies systematically for vulnerable consumers. These findings advance consumer vulnerability theory in the digital context and offer evidence-based implications for consumer protection policy, platform governance, and digital literacy education. Full article

In the online shopping context, the proliferation of digital platforms has contributed to an increase in impulsive buying behavior (IBB), which can sometimes lead to regret. This study aims to explore the intrinsic and extrinsic stimuli that influence consumers’ online impulsive buying behavior, which subsequently affects their post-purchase cognitive dissonance, with the moderating role of price consideration (PC). The conceptual framework was formulated using the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S-O-R) model. A total of 813 responses were collected and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings revealed that perceived utilitarian value (PUV), perceived enjoyment (PE), fear of missing out (FOM), and green trust (GT) positively impact online impulsive buying behavior (IBB), which, in turn, positively impacts post-purchase cognitive dissonance (PCD). Moreover, a significant moderating role of PC is found in the relationship between IBB and PCD, suggesting that consumers with low price consideration tend to regret their impulsive buying more. The findings provide insights that guide online retail sellers and digital marketers to develop or implement customized strategies based on the intrinsic and extrinsic stimuli that influence customers’ impulsive buying and subsequent post-purchase cognitive dissonance. Full article

Under the rapid development of live commerce, impulse buying has become a core consumption phenomenon, yet its psychological triggering pathways across different consumer groups remain to be fully elucidated. Drawing on the S–O–R framework, this study conceptualizes live-stream interactivity, novelty, and streamer attractiveness as external “stimuli,” and positions immersive experience as the core “organism” mechanism, thereby constructing and testing an integrated “stimulus–experience–response (impulse buying intention)” model. Using a mixed-method approach that combines structural equation modeling (SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), the results show that all three live-stream features significantly enhance impulse buying intention, primarily by strengthening immersive experience, with immersion exerting a significant partial mediating effect. Moreover, consumers’ loneliness significantly amplifies the indirect effect of live-stream features on impulse buying via immersive experience. The fsQCA further uncovers multiple equivalent pathways leading to high impulse buying intention, including a strong-experience pattern centered on “streamer attractiveness + immersive experience,” as well as a social compensation pattern centered on “high interactivity + high loneliness.” This study provides a testable theoretical framework, actionable operational strategies, and sustainable ethical guidance for live commerce, offering a pathway for the industry to achieve a “high experience × high conversion × high well-being” triple-win outcome. Full article

There is an increasing number of academic and regulatory investigations into the behavioral and psychological implications of using Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services due to their rapid growth. There have been extensive investigations into impulse purchases using BNPL services; however, there has been relatively little focus placed upon examining post-purchase regret associated with BNPL service use. The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic review of the extant literature investigating how BNPL service use relates to both impulsive purchasing behavior and post-purchase regret. A total of ten empirical studies were identified through a comprehensive search of the Scopus database according to the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, which were all published between 2018 and 2025. The results indicated that BNPL features, including deferred payments, perceived affordability, and urgency cues, are consistent predictors of both greater impulsive purchasing and lower levels of payment salience. The results of this review, however, reveal that many existing studies have failed to directly measure post-purchase regret and instead rely on proxy indicators, including financial distress, emotional discomfort, and decreased well-being. These findings, therefore, highlight a major theoretical and methodological void in the existing literature. In addition, by providing a synthesis of the current evidence base, this review aims to provide a clearer understanding of how BNPL features influence both consumer decision-making processes and post-purchase emotional responses; additionally, this review highlights the necessity for future research to utilize valid measures of regret, longitudinal designs and ethically informed analytical frameworks when investigating the psychological impacts of adopting BNPL services. Full article

E-commerce retailers bear substantial additional costs arising from high product return rates due to lenient return policies and consumers’ impulsive purchasing. This study aims to accurately predict product return behavior before payment, supporting proactive return management and reducing potential losses. Based on the Graph Transformer, we proposed a novel return prediction model, Returnformer, which focuses on capturing user–product connections represented in topological structures of bipartite graphs. The Returnformer first integrates global topological embeddings into original node features to alleviate structural information loss caused by graph partitioning. It then employs a Graph Transformer to capture long-range user–item dependencies within local subgraphs. In addition, a graph-level attention mechanism is introduced to facilitate the propagation of global return patterns across different subgraphs. Experiments on a real-world e-commerce dataset show that the Returnformer outperforms four machine learning models in terms of prediction accuracy, demonstrating superior performance compared to the state-of-the-art models. The proposed model enables retailers to identify potential return risks prior to payment, thereby supporting timely and proactive preventive interventions. Full article