'Help-self' versus 'help-others': the effect of consumption context on health decisions.

• Author: He, Yi

1. INTRODUCTION

   Healthcare campaigns often promote healthful activities that are fundamentally different in nature with some benefiting the individual him/herself and/or those that are close to the individual (i.e., "help-self" activities, such as condom purchase, breast cancer screening) and others benefiting a much broader community (i.e., "help-others" activities, such as donations to charitable causes, participation in charity marathons; Liu and Aaker 2008; Olivola 2009). For example, AIDS Healthcare Foundation encourages condom use as means of preventing the sexual transmission of HIV and declares February 13th World Condom Day in 2009. Conversely, an advertisement from Heifer International urges people to provide financial contribution to the organization and states "Your gift gives a future to AIDS victims and orphans." A number of interesting questions arise from these healthcare marketing practices: which kind of activities will be allocated more resources at a given situation? What are the potential situational and/or dispositional factors that may drive an individual's allocation decision? Will an individual allocate more to "help-others" activities when his/her decision is subjective to public scrutiny?

   To shed light on these interesting questions, the present research: 1) examines the impact of consumption context (private versus public) on resource allocation decision between "help-self" and "help-others" health activities; 2) tests for ways that self-monitoring moderates the hypothesized consumption context effects; and 3) investigates the effects of consumption context on future health behavioral intentions. In the sections that follow, I first review the prior literature on the influence of consumption context on consumer behavior and discuss its theoretical relevance for consumer healthcare decision making. I then report an experiment to test the theoretical framework.

2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

   2.1 Private versus Public Health Decision

   Research indicates that the awareness that one's health decision will be observed by others influences an individual's health activities. For example, Dellande and Nyer (2010) investigate the effect of making public the commitment to lose weight on actual weight loss. They have found that individuals who post their weight loss goals on a bulletin board achieve greater results compared to those who don't post their goals. According to the authors, when one's healthful behavioral commitment become publically accessible, an individual's motivation to engage in such behavior (i.e., losing weight) increases, which subsequently leads to greater weight loss. Similarly, Herman, Roth and Polivy (2003; see also Hetherington et al. 2006) have shown that food intake varies depending on whether the eating behavior is observed by others or not. Numerous studies have demonstrated that presence of a noneating observer dramatically reduces food intake given that an individual attempts to restore his/her image of self-control in front of others (Herman, Roth and Polivy 2003). Within a non-healthcare context, Ratner and Kahn (2002) find that when consumption decisions become accessible to others, consumers will incorporate more variety into their decisions rather than concentrating on their favorite items. Such behavior, according to Ratner and Kahn, is driven by consumers' beliefs that variety seeking behaviors are perceived more favorably by others.

   The theoretical account that explains these interesting findings is impression management theory (Goffman 1959; Tice et al. 1995). Impression management theory evolves from an individual's efforts to manage public impression. Individuals are motivated to project a positive public self-image, and such impression management concerns are often automatically activated during a public (versus private) consumption context (Puntoni and Tavassoli 2007). An individual's desire to make a good impression and the fear of negative evaluation become more salient when their behavior is subject to public scrutiny. Therefore, the important consequence of a social audience is how the social setting influences the behaviors aimed at either marking a good impression or avoiding a bad one (Geen 1989).

   Building upon the above theoretical framework, I argue that individuals will alter their resource allocation decision between "help-self" and...