Scarcity or mortality salience? The effects of COVID-19 pandemic and power in consumer behavior in Brazil

• Autor(a) principal: Oliveira, Bruna Carneiro Maia de
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/34702
• topic: Brazil; Consumer behavior; COVID-19; Financial instability; Luxury consumption; Mortality salience; Power; Resource scarcity; Brasil; Comportamento do consumidor; Instabilidade financeira; Consumo de luxo; Saliência da mortalidade; Poder; Escassez de recursos; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

The COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on people’s lives have changed consumer behavior, dramatically impacting economies around the world. Individual’s sense of ontological security has been disrupted due to such great health and economic threats, which have led consumers to adapt to a new reality where physical interactions are frowned upon according to the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended safety and preventive measures. This dissertation intends to study the effects that the pandemic has on consumer behavior in Brazil, specifically regarding perceptions of power, mortality, and financial scarcity. Seeking to enhance the understanding of how consumers respond to such stimulus, mortality salience and financial scarcity are manipulated and one’s sense of power is measured, allowing for an analysis on their impact over individuals facing threats originated or heightened by the pandemic. Additionally, I investigate the concept of temporal discounting as a mediator to such factors. Finally, I evaluate this effect by measuring both luxury consumption and saving for retirement intentions. The results of this study revealed no significant effect of mortality salience and financial scarcity on consumers’ intention to save for the future nor for a preference towards luxury items. Regarding the moderation of power, the results showed that mortality salience has a direct impact on temporal discounting, in line with the literature, and confirmed power’s impact on luxury consumption, contrary to future-oriented behavior expected according to prior research. Power as a moderator did not have a significant relationship with education, income levels, temporal discounting, mortality salience, or financial scarcity.