Impacts of cultural dimensions on healthy diet through public self‐consciousness

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this research is to introduce and test a path model that explores the effects of Hofstede's cultural value dimensions on consumers' intention to eat a healthy diet, through the mediation of their public self-consciousness. Design/methodology/approach -A total of 21,974 subjects from 25 nations were surveyed in this cross-cultural consumer study.Findings -As the model demonstrated, individualism and uncertainty avoidance had negative impacts on public self-consciousness, while power distance and masculinity positively affected public self-consciousness, which in turn had a positive influence on consumers' intention to eat a healthy diet.Originality/value -The study measured each nation's cultural values by assigning the national culture index scores originally computed by Hofstede. This operational approach made it possible to develop and test a hierarchical path model on the relationships among cultural values, mediating variables and consumer behaviors. It also used the 3M model as a theoretical structure for investigating the nomological validity of two new constructs that are relevant to the field of consumer marketing (i.e. public self-consciousness and intention to eat a healthy diet). Managerial implications are provided.

Personality traits influencing young adults' conspicuous consumption

“…In turn, compound traits combined with the individual's environment create situational traits, which are recognized as behavioural differences presented in general contexts but with their own particularities, for example, health care (Sun et al, 2009), relationships with sports celebrities (Sun & Wu, 2012), motivation for the game (Fang & Mowen, 2009) or propensity to participate in voluntary services (Mowen & Sujan, 2005). Finally, surface traits reflect permanent trends on specific behaviours in a domain.…”

Self-Consciousness in Online Shopping Behavior

“…This is verified in the present review of the literature, although there is a certain favorable trend toward greater applicability of self-consciousness in the consumer field in the last decade. In this sense, most of the previous works have focused on public self-consciousness [10][11][12][13]. In contrast, there are two studies that have analyzed the private self-consciousness dimension exclusively [13][14][15].…”

Self-Consciousness and Healthy Personality in Online Shopping Behavior

“…This is verified in the present review of the literature, although there is a certain favorable trend towards greater applicability of self-consciousness in the consumer field in the last decade. In this sense, most of the previous works have focused on public self-consciousness [10,11,12,13]. In contrast, there are two studies that have analyzed the private self-consciousness dimension exclusively [13,14,15].…”

“…In this sense, most of the previous works have focused on public self-consciousness [10,11,12,13]. In contrast, there are two studies that have analyzed the private self-consciousness dimension exclusively [13,14,15]. Finally, few studies examine the three dimensions or even two of them [9,16,17,18].…”

“…Likewise, some authors have related public self-consciousness with responsible consumption, such as Sun et al [13], who noted that public self-consciousness moderates the relationship between social factors and the intention to follow a healthy diet. But other authors have related public self-consciousness with some negative aspects of consumers, such as Xu [21], who proved the influence of public self-consciousness on compulsive buying through materialism, finding that young consumers high in public self-consciousness are more likely to be materialistic.…”