The purpose of this study is to identify the influences of psychological variables and fashion-related psychological variables on purchasing fashion items on the Internet. Boredom proneness and public self-consciousness were selected as psychological variables, and dressing style was selected as a fashion-related psychological variable. It was hypothesized that boredom proneness and public self-consciousness not only influence the purchasing frequency of fashion items on the Internet directly, but also indirectly through dressing style. Data were gathered by surveying university students in Seoul using convenience sampling. Two hundred and eighty-six questionnaires were used in the statistical analysis. SPSS was used for exploratory factor analysis, and AMOS was used for hypothesized relationship testing. The factor analysis of boredom proneness revealed five dimensions, “helplessness,” “affective response,” “lack of internal stimulation,” “lack of external stimulation,” and “perception of time.” The factor analysis of public self-consciousness revealed two dimensions, “appearance-consciousness” and “styleconsciousness,” and the factor analysis of dressing style revealed one dimension. The overall fit of the hypothesized model suggests that the model fits the data well. The hypothesized relationship test proved that boredom proneness and public self-consciousness influence the purchasing frequency of fashion items on the Internet indirectly through dressing style. The results implicate effective strategies for Internet shopping malls and suggestions for future study.

최근 HCI 분야에서 정서 인식은 정서 지능을 구현하기 위한 핵심적인 단계 중의 하나이다. 생체신호를 이용하여 정서 인식을 시도하는 연구들이 시도되고 있으나, 기본 정서 이외의 다른 정서에 대한 연구는 거의 이루어지지 않았다. 본 연구의 목적은 무료함, 통증, 그리고 놀람의 세 가지 정서 간 자율신경계 반응의 차이를 확인하는 것이다. 실험자는 217명의 실험참여자(남 96명)들을 대상으로 시/청각 자극을 조합하여 무료함과 놀람 정서를 유발하였고, 혈압기를 이용하여 통증 정서를 유발하였다. 정서 자극이 제시되는 동안 피부전기활동, 피부온도, 심전도와 광혈량도를 측정하였고, 실험참여자들이 경험한 정서 범주와 강도를 정서평가척도 상에 평정하게 하였다. 정서 자극에 대한 평가 결과, 사용된 정서 자극은 평균 92.5%의 적합성과 5.43의 효과성을 보였는데, 이는 각 정서 자극이 해당 정서를 효과적으로 유발한 것을 의미한다. 자율신경계 측정 결과, 피부전기활동, 피부온도, 심박률, 심박률의 저주파수 성분과 평균 혈류량은 안정 상태와 정서 상태 간의 유의한 차이를 보였다. 또한 각 정서에 의해 유발된 자율신경계 반응은 정서 간에도 유의한 차이가 있는 것으로 나타났다. 이러한 결과는 정서이론의 확장과 자율신경계 반응 측정 지표를 활용하여 정서를 인식하는 알고리즘 및 인간 정서를 변별하는 컴퓨터 시스템 개발에 응용 가능할 것이다.

The study seeks to understand the effects of boredom proneness on impulse purchasing and smartphone addiction of young consumers. Moreover, the possible mediating role of smartphone addiction is tested for the effect of boredom proneness on impulse purchasing. Nowadays, the effect of emotions on human behavior is generally accepted, and boredom is one of the important and common problematic feelings or moods at various levels of life due to factors like unemployment, not being able to work in a suitable job, not getting appropriate education matching individual abilities, monotony of tasks, and feeling life is meaningless. Investigating the effect of boredom on specific consumer behavior would increase our knowledge about consumer behavior. For the research, a survey was conducted 313 students from Kirikkale University, Keskin Vocational High School; the data were collected by convenience sampling method. The data were processed through statistical tools like exploratory factor analysis, coefficient alphas, and regression analysis. The results of the study reveal that boredom proneness affects impulse purchasing and smartphone addiction. In addition, it is understood that smartphone addiction plays a mediating role in the effect of boredom proneness on impulse purchasing. These results indicate that boredom can be an important factor affecting certain negative consumer behaviors.

Boredom has been recognized as an important cultural symptom in the formation of modernism. Charles Baudelaire, who had affected to a remarkable extent upon modernism, was representatively a poet of “spleen” or in other words, “boredom.” It is widely conjectured that T. S. Eliot, who was once under the influence of Baudelaire, was interested in the problem of boredom as a socio-cultural phenomenon. There have been several terms that designate the similar meaning to boredom such as, melancholy, acedia, ennui and so on. As they are various, the individual meanings and usages are slightly different. However, it is widely acknowledged that the concept of boredom first emerged before and after the World Wars to be merged into modernity. Therefore, the problem of boredom shows the slice of human mentality in an industrialized and urbanized society that may expands into the existential problems. In this respect, The Waste Land shows the barren and sterile landscape of human mind after experiencing the World War, in which people had witnessed absurdity, meaninglessness of life, the sense of emptiness, and the overwhelming boredom. Eliot suggests lots of images of boredom in the poem, these images sometimes appear directively and other times by way of providing barren images of natural landscapes that metaphorize the human existential conditions. Most of such images are very much poetic; and also at the same time, they are the life conditions that modernist writers tried to express as the core essence of life in modernism. The Waste Land is one of the most representative texts that show this relationship between boredom and modernism.