Why do smartphone shoppers help others on websites? The effects of attachments on reciprocal altruism

Abstract

Why do people help others on mobile shopping sites, even when members have never met? To answer the research question, this study applies attachment theory to investigate the relationships between formation variables (trust, enjoyment, and timesaving), transfer variables (site, group, and interpersonal attachments), and an outcome variable (reciprocal altruism). An online survey was conducted of shoppers who had purchased tourism products with smartphones. The results show that trust, enjoyment, and timesaving have significant effects on site attachment, which, in turn, have a significant effect on both group and interpersonal attachments. Interpersonal attachment also has a highly significant effect on group attachment. Reciprocal altruism is influenced by both site and interpersonal attachments. The findings not only provide theoretical contributions to the tourism literature but also practical contributions to the tourism industry.

Exploring Consumer Behavior in Virtual Reality Tourism Using an Extended Stimulus-Organism-Response Model

“…Because store-evoked pleasure and arousal are closely associated with brand attachment (Orth, Limon, and Rose 2010), it is assumed that affective response positively influences attachment. Enjoyment of mobile tourism sites significantly influences attachment to the sites (Kim et al 2016b), implying that the greater the level of enjoyment as an affective response, the more closely it is related to attachment. Modern tourists' affective feelings derived from mobile phone usage enhanced by effective travel-related applications encourage them to be attached to the mobile phone while travelling (Lalicic and Weismayer 2018).…”

“…To measure potential tourists' attachment to tourism-related VR experiences, four items were drawn from previous research (Kim et al 2015(Kim et al , 2016b(Kim et al , 2016cOleksy and Wnuk 2017;Tussyadiah 2016) (e.g., "I am closely related to the content when using the tourism-related VR activity"). To assess visit intention to the destinations in VR tourism activities, three items were drawn from previous research by Huang et al (2013), Jang and Namkung (2009) Because 7-point Likert scales offer high reliability and discriminant validity according to Cicchetti, Showalter, and Tyrer (1985) and Preston and Colman (2000), a total of 27 items were appraised on a 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (7) strongly agree.…”

Motivations to engage in word-of-mouth behavior on social network sites

“…Altruism is the performance of an act for others without anticipating compensation (Paul, Miller, and Paul, 1993;Sundaram, Mitra, and Webster, 1998). Numerous studies have suggested that altruism is an important construct to explain individuals' willingness to share information and WOM in online social spaces (Dellarocas, Zhang, and Awad, 2007;Hung and Li, 2007;Kim et al, 2015). Many people wish to contribute to others' decision-making or help those with the same interests by spreading their consumption experience (Carman, 1992).…”

Dual-route of persuasive communications in mobile tourism shopping

“…For online tourism products, site attachment is an important mediator between motivations (value and trust) and outcomes (altruism and loyalty) on online group-buying sites (Kim et al, 2015c). Site attachment in the context of mobile tourism shoppers is considered to be developed through positive experiences and is a mediator between antecedents (trust, enjoyment, and timesaving) and outcome variables (group and interpersonal attachment and reciprocal altruism) (Kim et al, 2015b). Site attachment explains important relationships between antecedents and consumer behaviors in online communities (Ren et al 2012).…”

“…Because of the rising importance of MTS and SNI, it will be increasingly significant for practitioners to understand the persuasive processes at work. A rapidly growing trend among tourists is to purchase and reserve tourism products and services from mobile websites accessed via mobile devices (Kim et al, 2015a;Kim et al, 2015b). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the dual-routes of communication of mobile shoppers, which in turn influence consumer decision-making with respect to purchasing and reserving tourism products and services via mobile devices (smartphones and tablets).…”