Purpose: Social crowding refers to the extent of social presence and proximity to others. A large number of studies have explored the effect of social crowding on consumers’ feelings and behaviours in real shopping scenes, whereas few studies have examined the potential marketing effect of social crowding on online mobile consumption behaviour despite mobile commerce’s increasing popularity in recent years. The current intends to explore the effect of social crowding on online mobile purchase and its underlying neural basis.
Methods: The current study employed a questionnaire survey and an implicit panic buying experiment, in which the participants were asked to press the button as soon as possible to buy the showed product. A 2-level social crowding (low vs high) × 2-level feedback of panic buying (success vs fail) design was employed to test the negative impact of social crowding on consumers’ online mobile purchase intention by using electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings.
Results: Behaviorally, participants showed higher purchase intention in low social crowding environment compared with the high crowding condition. The event-related potentials (ERPs) results indicated that consumers had a higher affective/motivational evaluation (reflected in a smaller feedback-related negativity (FRN) amplitude) regarding the successful rather than the failing feedback in the low social crowding condition. However, this difference was not detected in the high social crowding condition. Meanwhile, more attentional resources (reflected in a greater P300 amplitude) were directed toward processing the feedback outcomes in the low rather than the high social crowding condition.
Conclusion: The current study provided neurophysiological response that social crowding negatively influences consumers’ online purchase intention. Some implications for theory and practice were also discussed.

Keywords: social crowding, online purchase intention, ERP, FRN, P300


中文翻译：

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社会拥挤对消费者在线移动购物的影响：来自行为和 ERP 的证据

目的：社会拥挤是指社会存在的程度和与他人的接近程度。大量研究探讨了社交拥挤对真实购物场景中消费者感受和行为的影响，而尽管近年来移动商务日益普及，但很少有研究探讨社交拥挤对在线移动消费行为的潜在营销影响。目前打算探索社交拥挤对在线移动购买的影响及其潜在的神经基础。
方法：目前的研究采用问卷调查和隐性恐慌购买实验，要求参与者尽快按下按钮购买展示的产品。采用 2 级社交拥挤（低 vs 高）×2 级恐慌购买反馈（成功 vs 失败）设计，通过脑电图（EEG）记录测试社交拥挤对消费者在线移动购买意愿的负面影响。
结果：在行为上，与高拥挤条件相比，参与者在低社会拥挤环境中表现出更高的购买意愿。事件相关电位 (ERPs) 结果表明，在低社会拥挤条件下，消费者对成功而不是失败的反馈有更高的情感/动机评估（反映在较小的反馈相关消极性 (FRN) 幅度上）。然而，在高社会拥挤条件下没有发现这种差异。同时，更多的注意力资源（反映在更大的 P300 幅度中）被用于处理低而不是高社会拥挤条件下的反馈结果。
结论：目前的研究提供了社会拥挤对消费者在线购买意愿产生负面影响的神经生理学反应。还讨论了对理论和实践的一些影响。

关键词：社交拥挤，在线购买意向，ERP，FRN，P300