Upward social comparison on social network sites and impulse buying: A moderated mediation model of negative affect and rumination

Highlights

• Upward social comparison on social network sites predicted positively impulse buying.

• Negative affect mediated the association between upward social comparison on social network sites and impulse buying.

• Rumination moderated both the direct and indirect effects of upward social comparison on impulse buying.

Abstract

Many factors have been proposed to contribute to impulse buying, however, little research has tested the role of upward social comparison on social network sites (SNSs) in impulse buying, and less is known about the underlying processes that may mediate or moderate this relationship. The current study focused on the relation between upward social comparison on SNSs and impulse buying and the mediating effect of negative affect and the moderating effect of rumination. A total of 430 Chinese undergraduate students completed measures of upward social comparison on SNSs, impulse buying, negative affect, and rumination. Results revealed that making upward comparisons on SNSs can lead young adults to make more impulse buying and that negative affect mediated this effect. In addition, the direct effect of upward social comparison on SNSs on impulse buying and the indirect effect via negative affect were both moderated by rumination. These two effects were stronger for young adults with high levels of rumination rather than for those students with low levels of rumination. Our research provides a better understanding of the internal mechanism and boundary condition in the relation between making upward comparisons on SNS and impulse buying. Limitations and implications are also discussed.

Introduction

Impulse buying is defined as unplanned and sudden purchases, and is often accompanied by cognitive and affective reactions (Rook, 1987). Impulse buyers are prone to express their hedonic versus utilitarian considerations, and their shopping experiences are commonly driven by high-arousal emotions such as excitement and pleasure. Impulse buying has already been a prevalent phenomenon in modern society. A study by Merzer (2014) found that among 1000 adult Americans, 75% reported having made a purchase on impulse alone. Impulse buying is also apparent among consumers in China and arguably even more serious because of the popularity and convenience of online shopping (Chen & Zhang, 2015). Similar to other types of self-indulgent behaviors (i.e. alcohol assumption), low to moderate levels of impulse buying are adaptive, whereas high levels of impulse buying are harmful and self-destructive. Researchers have documented wide-ranging impacts of impulse purchasing, including its negative associations with subjective well-being (Silvera, Lavack, & Kropp, 2008), the financial woes of over-extended credit and debt (Forney & Park, 2009), a state of cognitive and affective ambivalence (Li, Deng, & Moutinho, 2015), and negative affect such as guilt and regret. Given the prevalence of impulse buying, it is necessary to understand the antecedents and influence factors of impulse buying. The factors contributing to impulse buying can be distinguished into four dimensions: external stimuli, internal stimuli, situational and product related factors, and demographics and socio-cultural factors (Muruganantham & Bhakat, 2013). External stimuli refer to marketing cues controlled by marketers to lure consumers into making purchases (Youn & Faber, 2000). The given shopping platform (Dawson & Kim, 2009), product display (Hulten & Vanyushyn, 2011), and sensory stimulants (Kaur & Singh, 2007) are major external causes of impulse buying. For instance, Kaur and Singh (2007) found that background music played an important role in impulse buying. Internal stimuli are factors related to individual personalities, mainly including impulsiveness (Bratko, Butkovic, & Bosnjak, 2013), hedonism (Hausman, 2000), variety seeking (Hawkins, Roger, Coney, & Mookerjee, 2007), level of self-control (Youn & Faber, 2000), and emotions (Verplanken & Herabadi, 2001). In particular, impulse buying can be induced through individuals' tendency to involve in impulse buying, a hedonic need, motives to seeking variety and differences, lack of self-control, and a desire to escape from negative feelings. Situational and product related factors involve the time of shopping (Jeffrey & Hodge, 2007), fashion products (Park, Kim, & Forney, 2006), and new products (Harmancioglu, Finney, & Joseph, 2009). In particular, spending more time in seeking impulse items, fashion involvement, and knowledge about the new product drive impulse buying. Demographics and social-cultural factors, consisting of individuals' gender, age, income, education, culture, and socioeconomic status, are also important determinants of impulse buying (Coley and Burgess, 2003, Vohs and Faber, 2007). For instance, men tend to buy impulsively instrumental and leisure items while women are more likely to engage in impulse buying of symbolic and self-expressive products (Coley & Burgess, 2003). In addition, individualist consumers rather than collectivist consumers seem to engage themselves in more impulse buying (Kacen & Lee, 2002). Although many factors have been identified to contribute to impulse purchasing, it is still worthwhile to investigate other possible causes given the wide-ranging impacts of impulse buying. For our purposes, we focus on the common social phenomenon of social comparison on SNSs, and examine its possible effects on impulse purchasing.

Social comparison is a critical feature of social life. People need to compare themselves with others to obtain a better understanding of the self and know precisely about their abilities and capabilities (Festinger, 1954). Research has focused on comparison targets suggest that individuals who have similar related attributes are more likely to be selected as comparison targets (Buunk & Gibbons, 2007). In addition, upward social comparison and downward social comparison are two commonly identified types. Upward social comparison occurs when comparing with someone who are considered socially superior in some way, whereas downward comparison occurs when individuals compare themselves with someone who are deemed socially worse off than they are (Vogel, Rose, Roberts, & Eckles, 2014). Social comparison serves as a variety of functions, including satisfying the self-enhancement motive (Suls, Martin, & Wheeler, 2002), increasing self-esteem (Vogel et al., 2014), regulating emotions and well-being (Taylor & Brown, 1988), evaluating the self (Muller & Butera, 2007), and so on. More recently, as with the emergence of social network sites (SNSs), social comparison has been more ubiquitous because SNSs can provide a great deal of information describing the lives of individuals (Sabatini & Sarracino, 2015) and because the time we used to browse and search for information online is much longer than offline (Wise, Alhabash, & Park, 2010). Given that viewing others' profiles on SNSs has already been an increasing prevalent activity (Pempek, Yermolayeva, & Calvert, 2009), social network sites are regarded as a nearly ideal platform for individuals to make social comparison. Social comparison on SNSs may be especially obvious among young adults (ages 18 to 29) because they invest much more time in browsing and searching for information online (Pempek et al., 2009). A report regarding social media usage from 2005 to 2015 found that fully 90% of young adults use social media (Perrin, 2015, pp. 52–68). Roberts and his colleagues (2005) reported that young people spend approximately 6.5 h per day on media to stay in touch with friends, to make new friends, and to represent the self. Given that SNSs profiles always display positively skewed information and overly idealistic images due to the motivation of users to manage their self-images (Jordan et al., 2011, Lee-Won et al., 2014, Walther, 2007), people, especially young adults, are inclined to perceive upward social comparison information (Nadkarni and Hofmann, 2012, Vogel et al., 2015).

Upward social comparison on SNSs can lead to a series of negative outcomes. Specifically, when people are exposed to images of attractive others, their self-perceptions as well as self-evaluations are undermined (Fardouly et al., 2015, Haferkamp and Krämer, 2011). In addition, the frequent usage of SNSs may trigger people to experience negative emotions, such as envy (Appel et al., 2015, Tandoc et al., 2015) and social anxiety (Shaw, Timpano, Tran, & Joormann, 2015). Researchers have also documented that individuals' mental health and well-being (Kross et al., 2013) tend to suffer after viewing overly positive profiles presented by others on social media, which may lead to symptoms such as depression (Appel, Gerlach, & Crusius, 2016).

Prior research has not been sufficiently attentive to the relationship between social comparison on mass media and impulse buying. However, this relation can be inferred from some indirect sources. First, negative affect plays an important role when using upward social comparison on SNSs to predict impulse buying. Researchers found that negative affect could predict impulse purchasing, which was seen as a means to repair negative emotions (Silvera et al., 2008, Verplanken et al., 2005). Impulse buying is emotion-related behavior. When negative emotions occur, individuals tend to involve in impulse-buying behavior and regard this behavior as a way to comfort themselves. In addition, impulse buying can also elevate chronic negative emotions because the purpose of impulse buying is to make oneself feel better (Verplanken et al., 2005). A lot of existing literature have confirmed the relationship between negative affect and impulse buying. For instance, Sneath, Lacey, and Kennett-Hensel (2008) found that depression and disappointment were positively related to impulse buying. Verplanken et al. (2005) found that negative affect contributed to both cognitive and affective component of impulse buying. At the same time, extant literature provides ample evidence on the causal relation between upward social comparison on SNSs and negative affect (e.g. Appel et al., 2015, Tandoc et al., 2015). As we discussed above, individuals' negative emotions may be primed when self-comparing with positive profiles presented on SNSs. People who are exposed to superior others in an online context feel envious, anxious, and depressed, and these negative emotions in turn lead them to engage in impulse-buying behavior. Given that young adults are more likely to make upward social comparison on SNSs, they may experience greater negative affect (Shaw et al., 2015), and as a result, involve in more impulse-buying behavior.

Second, a large number of findings suggest that the appearance-enhancing motive is a critical determinant of impulse buying (Durante, Griskevicius, Hill, Perilloux & Li, 2010). In order to maintain or enhance their own attractiveness and self-image, people are more likely to buy some relevant products such as fashionable clothing (Dittmar, Beattie, & Friese, 1995). Given that self-image comparison is one important part of social comparison, people exposed to upward comparison may experience strong concerns about their appearance and self-image, which in turn, leads to an increase in impulse buying (Ogden & Venkat, 2001). Empirical evidence from Lucas and Koff (2017) found that upward physical appearance comparison could increase impulse purchasing. The self-image social comparison is more obvious among young adults. Bessenoff and Del Priore (2007) found that younger females rather than older woman were more likely to compare their images with profiles in magazines. Therefore, young people are more prone to impulse buying to maintain high level of self-attractiveness. Based on existing literature, we propose that upward social comparison on SNSs promotes young adults' impulse buying.

As we discussed above, upward social comparison on SNSs can influence an individual's tendancy to impulse purchase by managing negative affect or fulfilling a self-attractiveness motive. We consider negative affect may be the most natural response to upward social comparison because on the one hand, the motivation to enhance self-attractiveness is driven by appearance-enhancing concerns after exposure to images of attractive persons (Dittmar et al., 1995). A concern is defined as an unambiguous expression of an unpleasant emotion (Zimmermann et al., 2011). Thus, negative emotions (e.g., a concern) may be a preliminary response to comparing oneself with attractive others, which in turn, drives a self-enhancement motive. On the other hand, appearance-enhancing concerns occur only when making an upward physical appearance comparison (Lucas & Koff, 2017). In actuality, social comparison on SNSs is not limited to physical appearance comparisons. Social comparisons on SNSs consist of comparisons across multiple dimensions such as status, achievements, and social connections (Chou & Edge, 2012). Therefore, it could be reasoned that negative affect is a more generalized reaction to upward social comparison.

Additionally, to test the relation between upward social comparison on SNSs and impulse buying, it becomes necessary to define boundary conditions that may be of both theoretical and practical importance. We need to know the factors that can exacerbate or weaken the influence of upward social comparison on SNSs on impulse buying. The current research focused on a dispositional trait: rumination and examined whether rumination could moderate the relationship between upward social comparison on SNSs and impulse buying.

Rumination refers to repetitive thoughts and behaviors related to symptoms of distress and the potential causes and consequences of these symptoms (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991). Rumination is detrimental within the virtual social scene and can bring about numerous negative outcomes such as eroding social support, impairing problem solving, inhibiting instrumental behavior, and exacerbating depressive symptoms (Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco, & Lyubomirsky, 2008). With the increasing attention being paid to rumination, researchers began to focus on the spillover effect of rumination and found that rumination can predict the risk of alcohol abuse (Nolen-Hoeksema, Stice, Wade, & Bohon, 2007) and anxiety (Muris, Roelofs, Rassin, Franken, & Mayer, 2005).

The level of rumination can influence individuals' reactions to stressful events. According to the response styles theory (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991), when exposed to stressful events, people with higher levels of rumination are more prone to think repetitively about those events, which in turn, may lead them assume more negative moods effects as a result (e.g., depression, Conway, Csank, Holm, & Blake, 2000). Rumination can predict a variety of negative emotions such as depression (Conway et al., 2000) and distress (Taku, Calhoun, Cann, & Tedeschi, 2008). In addition, existing literature have documented that rumination contributes to not only transient negative mood states but also extensive and chronic negative affect (Genet & Siemer, 2012). Therefore, it is conceivable that when faced with a stressful event (i.e. upward social comparison on SNSs), individuals with high levels of rumination may think the information or the profiles presented on social network sites repeatedly, which enables them to experience stronger negative affect. Likewise, rumination may interact with negative moods. People with high levels of rumination pay more attention to their negative emotions and get stuck in these negative emotions. They struggle to find some ways to help them mitigate these negative emotions. However, because the high level of rumination reduce individuals' limited cognitive resources and self-control capacity (Denson, Pedersen, Friese, Hahm, & Roberts, 2011), they are more likely to take some irrational actions such as self-indulgent behaviors to buffer against the negative emotions they experienced. Empirical findings from previous research can support the moderating effect of rumination (Bardone-Cone et al., 2006, Genet and Siemer, 2012). For instance, Genet and Siemer (2012) found that rumination and daily negative events had a significant interaction effect on the daily mood of young adults. Bardone-Cone et al. (2006) proposed that people who reported high rumination scores were more inclined to show some escapist behaviors such as engaging in binge eating and drinking, a mean to escape from their self-directed thoughts. Given the functionality of rumination, it is worth considering rumination as a potential moderator in the association between upward social comparison on SNSs and impulse buying.

Given the prevalence of upward social comparison on SNSs and the severe consequences of impulse buying, it is imperative to explore the underlying mechanisms behind the relationship between upward social comparison on SNSs and impulse buying. Prior studies mainly focused on the effect of upward social comparison on SNSs on mental health (Appel et al., 2015). Little empirical research tests the relation between upward self-comparison across social network sites and impulse purchase tendency, there is yet to be research that effectively describes how and when upward social comparison on SNSs can affect individuals' impulse buying. To rectify these gaps in our knowledge of impulse buying, the current study would attempt to examine the mediating effect of negative affect and the moderating effect of rumination in the relationship between upward social comparison on SNSs and impulse buying. The proposed model was illustrated in Fig. 1.

Hypothesis 1

Upward social comparison on SNSs would promote impulse buying tendency.

Hypothesis 2

Negative affect would mediate the relationship between upward social comparison on SNSs and impulse buying.

Hypothesis 3

Rumination would moderate both the direct and indirect effects of upward social comparison on SNSs on impulse buying.