Buying With Envy or Buying with Control? The Role of Self-Control in Envious Purchase

In recent years’ phenomena such as social comparison changes consumers’ decisions and behaviors. Aligning with this notion, consumers who actively compare themselves with others might eventually feel envy. Envy is recognized as a negative emotion affecting purchase intention. In line, this research focuses on the moderating role of self-control on the effect of envy on envious purchase intention. With quantitative method research conducted a survey with participants admitted they previously bought some items out of envy. Two hundred clean data were put analysis according to research hypotheses. As a result, envy is seen significantly predicting envious purchase intention and self-control demonstrated significant moderating role. To further elaborate, self-control is seen to reduce the effect of envy on envious purchase intention to some extent. Additionally, gender used as a second moderating variable combining self-control and as a result it’s observed that in group of female effect size of envy on envious purchase intention were lower than males. These results of the study underline the importance of self-control, gender, envy in consumer behavior research and suggest promoting self-control, in general and in gender wise, can reduce irrational side of consumption. Revealing this dynamic may help marketers and researchers to manage healthy emotion-driven consumption.