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.
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.