Project
Emotions, situations and sustainable consumption
We investigate why effects of emotions on sustainable consumption depend on situations. More specifically, we look at consumers’ choices to be in certain situations and how this choice influences the way emotions steer consumption. We separate three (sub)projects: 1) how people perceive situations, 2) how consumers choose consumption situations when experiencing emotions, 3) how the choice to be in certain consumption situations impacts subsequent consumption choices, through a change in experienced emotions.
Background
People navigate their own lives. They generally avoid negative situations and seek out positive ones (Emmons et al., 1986). This choice for situations is theorized to be one way of regulating one’s emotions (Gross, 2007; Gross & Feldman Barrett, 2011), and experienced emotions and goals seem to shape the choice to stay in everyday situations (Emmons & Diener, 1986). Sometimes, people use consumption to regulate their emotions (e.g., buying comfort food to feel better). So, selecting consumption situations could regulate people’s emotions. Surprisingly, ample research has investigated how emotions influence choices for consumption situations, and how this choice subsequently changes consumption behaviour.
Project description
In this project, we investigate this question, and dive into emotions, goals, situation selection and emotion-regulation. Specifically, we compare emotion-specific goals (e.g. staying with a target of your anger to get revenge) to more general emotion-regulation motives such as seeking pleasure).
Results
In our first project, we found that taxonomies of situation perception and appraisal dimensions overlap to a large extent. Across daily-life and emotional situations, people perceive situations according to their valence, task-related effort, negative and positive interaction with others.
In our second project, we find that different emotions indeed predict situation choice. We see that consumers choose consumption situations to regulate their experienced emotions, and that this choice is mostly based on the goals emotions elicit. For example, guilty consumers choose situations that allow them to repair their relationship.