Virtuality Changes Consumer Preference: The Effect of Transaction Virtuality as Psychological Distance on Consumer Purchase Behavior

Do-Hyung Park
Additional contact information
Do-Hyung Park: School of Management Information Systems, Kookmin University, Seoul 02707, Korea

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 23, 1-16

Abstract: With the rapid development of information and communication technology, a variety of new industries and services are rapidly evolving based on the convergence between existing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and heterogeneous industries. In the meantime, the FinTech market, created by the convergence of financial and ICT areas, is emerging and growing rapidly. The new market of virtual transaction based on digital money is growing faster than any other FinTech area. The purpose of this study is to determine whether the perceived difference in the virtuality of a consumer’s transaction affects the consumer’s purchasing behavior and how the behavior changes. Specifically, this study revealed that consumers’ perceived virtuality differs according to the type of transaction method. Consumers felt that the money was more virtual when they had digital (virtual) currency for a service than when they had cash. This virtuality of money controls the psychological distance of the consumer’s money, which is closer to cash than virtual currency. This difference in psychological distance affects consumers’ information processing, such that when psychological distances are far (vs. close), consumers prefer products that are described as abstract (vs. concrete), and have a more favorable attitude toward products with more variety.

Keywords: Virtuality; digital money; construal level theory; psychological distance; FinTech (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/23/6618/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/23/6618/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:23:p:6618-:d:290104

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().