KOREASCHOLAR

Elder consumers are important consumer segment because of baby boomers and incoming aging societies in many countries. MacInnis and Mello (2005) indicate that hope is an important construct to influence consumer decisions. For many elder people who rely on others to lead a life gradually lose control of making consumption decision for themselves. If autonomy is one of the important value for elder people as Leventhal (1997) proposed, the moderating effect of decision autonomy to counterbalance the effect of hope is discussed in this study if it can enhance elder consumers’ SWB. This study firstly explored the antecedent factors of hope by adopting subjective evaluation from elder consumers. Then, hope was further manipulated in terms of goal importance and goal uncertainty to investigate the mechanism on consumption decision and SWB. A between-subjective experiment manipulated hope in two dimensions, goal importance (high / low) and goal outcome certainty (certainty / uncertainty), invited 142 consumers aged above 65 years old to participate. Result indicates that better mental health and financial ability as well as younger cognitive age relate to the hope of elder consumers and influence SWB. Hope is partially the psychological mechanism to influence more on SWB. Decision autonomy is not found its moderating effect on hope to SWB.

• Etta Y. I. Chen(Yuan Ze University, Taiwan)
• Yi-Hsuan Chiang(Yuan Ze University, Taiwan)