From Use to Abuse: When Everyday Consumption Behaviours Morph into Addictive Consumptive Behaviours

Abstract

Addiction does not begin with the harmful effects of being dependent on a particular consumption behaviour such as smoking, alcohol, or illegal drugs. Instead it starts with everyday seemingly benign behaviours that, through psychological, biophysical, and/or environmental triggers, can become harmful and morph into an addiction. We develop a framework based on harm and dependence that can help researchers better understand how consumers could become addicted to various types of everyday benign consumption behaviours (e.g., texting, shopping, plastic surgery, and other types of normally acceptable behaviours). Furthermore, the conceptual framework is based on expanding the concept of addiction to include the pre-addiction process with a focus on this continuum of benign to harmful behavioural consumption. This framework describes how consumers progress from a normal state of consumption into a state of addictive abuse and dependence. The framework discusses key issues and future research that can aid public policy researchers, practitioners, and marketers to better understand the entire pre-addiction process.

When Too Much Usage is Too Much: Exploring the Process of IT Addiction

“…In other disciplines (e.g. medicine, economics, or educational psychology), there have been efforts to explain the process of addiction to a substance [2,3,26,31,35]. Our findings were similar to those of prior models that emphasized different stages of behavior to show how a normal behavior can become problematic [31].…”

“…medicine, economics, or educational psychology), there have been efforts to explain the process of addiction to a substance [2,3,26,31,35]. Our findings were similar to those of prior models that emphasized different stages of behavior to show how a normal behavior can become problematic [31]. For instance, Grover et al [31] divided this process into pre-addiction and addiction, and described how everyday seemingly-benign consuming behaviors such as texting and shopping become harmful and transform over time into addiction.…”

“…For instance, Grover et al [31] presented a process model showing the transition from a pre-addiction stage (benign consumption) to an addiction stage (excessive consumption). According to their theory, the decision to perform a behavior begins with low engagement.…”

Coping strategies in individuals at risk and not at risk of mobile phone addiction

“…Some researchers of the subject [45,46,47] believe that excessive mobile phone use may be an attempt to escape from problems and unpleasant emotions, and the pleasure experienced when using the phone contributes to developing a permanent coping strategy. According to escape theory, which is used to explain compulsive buying [45,46,47], dependence on one's phone, just like dependence on shopping -is a "second-order/secondary addiction", which means that the use of the phone is an attempt to escape from another, more important problem, boredom, low self-esteem, difficulties in interpersonal relationships, etc.…”

P851-Padrões de uso do smartphone potencialmente disfuncionais em adultos portugueses

“…Este florescimento no uso do smartphone tornou mais saliente a temática de podermos estar perante uma adição, em que se verifica a passagem de um hábito para uma necessidade (Kwon, Kim, Cho, & Yang, 2013;Roberts, Yaya, Manolis, 2014) ou a passagem do gostar para o querer usar o smartphone, ponto de inflexão considerado por Grover et al (2011) num processo que é progressivo, frequentemente iniciado com usos aparentemente benignos deste dispositivo, que são moldados por factores múltiplos até configurarem uma padrão aditivo estruturado (Martin et al, 2013).…”