Research on the Impact of Valuation by Feeling and Calculation on Pro-social Behavior of Consumers Based on Field Experiments

Abstract

—Previous studies have found that valuation by feeling and calculation have an impact on prosocial consumer behavior, however they only focus on the impact of positive emotional value, meanwhile they rarely use field experiments to carry out the empirical analysis. This paper explores the effects of valuation by fear feeling and by calculation on prosocial behavior by field experiments. The first experiment found that, based on the value of fear emotion, the prosocial behavior of consumers was reduced by arousing fear emotion, compared with the valuation by calculation. In experiment 2, the income factors of consumers were introduced to explore the different purchasing behaviors of different income groups based on valuation by calculation and by feeling. In low income, the value of fear emotion reduces the prosocial behavior of consumers relative to the valuation by calculation; in high income, the value of fear emotion increases the prosocial behavior of consumers compared to the valuation by calculation. In the end, this paper puts forward marketing suggestions for different experimental effects, and this will help the relevant companies in practice.