COVID-19 restrictions and consumers’ psychological reactance toward offline shopping freedom restoration
By Naeem Akhtar, Muhammad Nadeem Akhtar, Muhammad Usman, Moazzam Ali, Umar Iqbal Siddiqi. 2020
126 citations recorded by the source corpus.
ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic threats and its subsequent restrictions on people's freedom, social interaction, closures of workplaces and shopping stores have caused public psychological reactance. In response, the study develops and tests a conceptual framework, which unveils the effects of perceived choice hesitation and perceived choice confidence on consumers’ psychological reactance. It also corroborates two bipolar behavioral outcomes of consumers’ psychological reactance— choice freedom satisfaction and resistance to persuasion. We employ the moderating role of anticipated worry and trust in government in strengthening the psychological reactance and final behavioral outcomes, respectively. Data collected from the country of origin of COVID-19 pandemic indicated the positive effects of antecedents on psychological reactance, which negatively affected choice freedom satisfaction and positively to resistance to persuasion. Anticipated worry and trust in government positively moderated these relationships. Findings extend the literature on psychology, service management, and consumer behavior, and suggest to government policymakers and store managers.
Subfields: Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Economics and Econometrics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c26f201d67ea1a948d0f20c1ff634b278abc93bd
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Citations in the corpus
- Exploring customers' responses to online service failure and recovery strategies during Covid‐19 pandemic: An actor–network theory perspective (2021, background): “Recent studies conducted by Addo et al. (2020) and Akhtar et al. (2020) highlighted the effects of the threats of Covid‐19 on offline shopping, such as hesitance in consumers' shopping behavior in response to threats of contagious disease and government restrictions.”
- Online Shopping Motives during the COVID-19 Pandemic—Lessons from the Crisis (2020, background): “Consumers hesitate to purchase goods at stationary retailers due to government restrictions and fears of infection [37].”