Identity has important implications for consumers’ choices in the marketplace. While prior research has mainly studied identity at the individual level, consumers’ social identities are growing more relevant in the marketplace. This dissertation examines how these social identities affect socially responsible decision-making. Using experiments as my primary method, I study how consumers’ political and couple identities can affect their decision-making in the context of sustainable consumption practices, COVID-19 behaviors, and the sharing economy. Across 16 online experiments, two Facebook split tests, and one field study, this dissertation demonstrates the critical implications of political and couple identity in the socially responsible decision-making process. 

First, this dissertation shows that consumers’ political identities influence their willingness to engage in sustainable consumption, COVID-19 prevention behaviors, and support for peer-to-peer providers in the sharing economy. Second, this dissertation examines sustainable consumption in a romantic relationship context and demonstrates that consumers’ sustainability-related decisions can influence their partners’ sustainable choices, highlighting the importance of couple identity. Overall, this dissertation contributes to the literature on identity and socially responsible decision-making and provides practical implications for marketers and policymakers who aim to improve consumers’ socially responsible behaviors in the marketplace.

Purpose: This study aims to expand the understanding of impulse buying behavior by looking further into the role of culture in cross-cultural contexts. Design/methodology/approach: A cross-cultural questionnaire was administered across three countries, namely, Sweden, Turkey and Vietnam. Findings: Culture impacts impulse buying behavior of subjects with different cultural backgrounds. However, the findings also indicate that other factors may affect impulse buying behavior. Originality/value: The cultural role on impulse buying was brought up by a few researchers in the literature, but Hofstede’s model of four cultural dimensions and their relationship to impulse buying behavior is tested for the first time in the literature across three different countries: Sweden, Turkey and Vietnam, which, respectively, represent northern Europe, southern Europe/a part of West Asia and South East Asia.

In the context of romantic relationships, partners regularly observe each other's unsustainable behavior. But how do these unsustainable behaviors influence each member of the couple? This research shows that how consumers respond to their partners' unsustainable behaviors depends on the amount of relationship power they possess: high-relationship-power individuals compensate for their partners' unsustainable behavior by acting in a more sustainable manner relative to their baseline tendencies, but low-relationship-power individuals do not increase their own sustainable behavior. This effect occurs because high-relationship-power partners feel more responsible for the reconstruction of the couple identity after it has been damaged by their partner's unsustainable choice; as a result, they have a stronger desire to signal a positive couple identity (i.e., a positive couple sustainable identity). Consistent with this theory, this effect is attenuated for high-relationship-power individuals who have weak green identities. Seven studies provide evidence for these findings by measuring and manipulating relationship power and assessing hypothetical and actual sustainable behaviors. This research contributes to the sustainable behavior literature and highlights effective ways to promote sustainable behavior in households.

With the proliferation of peer-to-peer (P2P) exchanges in the marketplace, understanding which consumer factors drive demand for P2P providers is important. We examine the role of consumers' economic system justification (ESJ) beliefs (about the fairness of existing economic arrangements and outcomes), which, despite their growing salience in the marketplace, have been overlooked in extant P2P research. We show that high (vs. low) ESJ increases consumers' interest in purchasing from P2P providers because it heightens perceptions of these providers' entrepreneurial spirit. The effect emerges in the laboratory and in the field with measured and manipulated ESJ, and it is attenuated for traditional commercial providers. The findings offer novel insights and implications for practice and emerging research on P2P exchanges, system justification, and ideological consumption more broadly.

At the time of this writing, COVID-19 has spread rapidly worldwide. Even though the United States became the epicenter of the pandemic in April 2020, partisan differences have been observed in terms of willingness to engage in coronavirus-prevention behaviors. Across four studies and an exploratory pilot study, we demonstrate that conservatives differ from liberals in their perceptions of preventive behaviors. Conservatives view preventative actions as being less impactful on others, which is partially due to their beliefs regarding personal responsibility. Building on this, we also demonstrate the downstream benefits of using self-benefit versus other-benefit appeals to target conservatives versus liberals. In doing so, we show that communicating about self-benefits can minimize differences between conservatives and liberals in COVID-19 prevention-behavior compliance. This work contributes to the literature on political ideology and offers practical implications for policy makers and health organizations making every effort to encourage behaviors that prevent the spread of viral infections.

Increasing political polarization in the United States and worldwide necessitates understanding of the key factors that can help shift different political groups' attitudes and behaviors regarding vital issues. In this article, we provide a systematic review of the research literature on political ideology and persuasion. By organizing the literature at three levels (self, social, and system), we propose an organizing framework for thinking about various persuasive factors that can encourage attitude and behavior change among conservatives and liberals. Our review highlights that considering the three levels at which persuasion operates can guide future theory and research, as well as provide practical tools for marketers and policymakers wishing to decrease ideological extremity and foster attitude and behavior change across both sides of the political divide.