Consumer Brand Cyberbullying in Social Commerce: The Interplay of Boredom and Personality Traits

Cyberbullying affects individuals of all ages and genders. Troubling statistics from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study highlight the seriousness of the issue. A global report ranked New Zealand as having the second-highest rate of bullying among 9-year-olds across 35 countries (Internet Safety Statistics, 2023). This makes understanding cyberbullying vital due to its significant impact on the well-being of New Zealand's citizens. Previous research on cyberbullying has predominantly focused on individual traits and characteristics (Ramasubramanian, 2016). However, there remains a significant gap in the literature regarding consumer-to-brand cyberbullying within the s-commerce environment. Emerging studies suggest that boredom might be an important factor for s.commerce usage and may play a role in driving CBCB, indicating the need for further investigation in this area. Based on boredom theories and Ali et al (2015) boredom's inductive framework in online commerce this study forms a framework which focuses on boredom and its associated personality traits with consumers' Facebook usage (a famous s-commerce platform in New Zealand having 88.2% of its entire population (Napoleon Cat, 2023)) and their engagement in consumer brand cyberbullying behavior. Based on the CBCB definition (Breitsohl et al., 2018) and related literature (Husemann et al., 2015; Laroche et al., 2012), this study (unlike existing research which mostly focused on consumer) extended CBCB and investigated this phenomenon from two perspectives: brand cyberbullying (where consumer bullies the brand) and consumer to consumer cyberbullying (consumer bullying other consumers to defend a brand). JEL Codes: Keywords: consumer brand cyberbullying, boredom, Facebook, enjoyment, social value.