Digital Commerce and the Digitally Connected Enterprise
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Paper Type
Short
Paper Number
1962
Description
Timely health-hazard information (HHI), containing the magnitude of potential environmental hazards and relevant precautions, aims to instruct individuals to minimize specific outdoor or indoor activities to protect themselves from harmful hazards or noxious pollutants. While offline demand typically decreases with fewer outdoor activities, this paper addresses the research questions of whether and how health-hazard information affects online consumer behaviors as well as offline demand. Leveraging a unique data set of HHI for air pollution and multichannel purchase behaviors in 165 stores and over 4,000 consumers in China, we perform panel linear regressions of consumer behaviors against the intensity of HHI. Our results suggest that HHI affects online product search and purchase through two different mechanisms. Pushed health-hazard information arouses the “avoidance” mechanism and pulled health-hazard information arouses the “bad mood inertia” mechanism. Contributions and practical implications are discussed.
Recommended Citation
Dong, Ying-Qiu; Goh, Khim Yong; Zhao, Yunkun; and Hou, Liwen, "Bad Mood or Avoidance: How Health-Hazard Information Influences Consumer Behavior" (2020). ICIS 2020 Proceedings. 11.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2020/digital_commerce/digital_commerce/11
Bad Mood or Avoidance: How Health-Hazard Information Influences Consumer Behavior
Timely health-hazard information (HHI), containing the magnitude of potential environmental hazards and relevant precautions, aims to instruct individuals to minimize specific outdoor or indoor activities to protect themselves from harmful hazards or noxious pollutants. While offline demand typically decreases with fewer outdoor activities, this paper addresses the research questions of whether and how health-hazard information affects online consumer behaviors as well as offline demand. Leveraging a unique data set of HHI for air pollution and multichannel purchase behaviors in 165 stores and over 4,000 consumers in China, we perform panel linear regressions of consumer behaviors against the intensity of HHI. Our results suggest that HHI affects online product search and purchase through two different mechanisms. Pushed health-hazard information arouses the “avoidance” mechanism and pulled health-hazard information arouses the “bad mood inertia” mechanism. Contributions and practical implications are discussed.
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