Understanding how upward social comparison stimulates impulse buying on image‑sharing social commerce platforms: A moderated mediation model of benign envy and self‑esteem / Trần Văn Đạt

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Understanding how upward social comparison stimulates impulse buying onimage-sharing social commerce platforms: A moderated mediation model ofbenign envy and self-esteem

Article in Current Psychology · April 2022DOI: 10.1007/s12144-022-03042-w

Dung Minh Nguyen

National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology (NKUST)

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Understanding how upward social comparison stimulates impulse buying on image‑sharing social commerce platforms: A moderated mediation model of benign envy and self‑esteem

Dat Van Tran1 · Trieu Nguyen2 · Dung Minh Nguyen3

Keywords Upward social comparison · Benign envy · Impulse buying · Self-esteem · Image-sharing social commerce platforms · Adolescents

In recent years, the pervasiveness of social networking sites (SNSs), including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, What-sApp, Pinterest, has made a significant change in the way people live, purchase, and communicate every day. The growing popularity of SNSs has ushered in a new era of electronic commerce, known as social commerce, which is changing our thinking about online shopping (Xiang et al., 2016). Basically, social commerce is a combination of social media and e-commerce that conducts various types of social media-supported commercial activities (Liang & Turban, 2011; Xiang et al., 2016). Both consumers and retailers can benefit from social commerce. It offers consumers a con-venient, seamless, and social shopping experience. Social commerce also allows retailers to develop high relationship quality with consumers, resulting in increased sales and cus-tomer engagement (Oladapo, 2021). Thus, social commerce is predicted as a potential research topic in marketing and information systems in the upcoming decades (Hajli, 2014).

* Dung Minh Nguyen Dat Van Tran

Trieu Nguyen

3 College of Management, National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, No. 1, University Road, Yanchao District, Kaohsiung City 82445, Taiwan, Republic of China

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Emerging from Web 2.0, social commerce platforms (SCPs) enable social interaction to assist online selling and buying activities and allow consumers to review, recommend, share, and purchase products or services (Hajli, 2015). Since 2006, there has been a new emerging form of SCPs concentrating on image orientation (i.e., image-sharing SCPs). The prominent examples of image-sharing SCPs include Pinterest, Instagram (in the US), and Mogujie (in China). Distinguishable from other forms of SCP (e.g., text-oriented and video-oriented SCPs), image-sharing SCP users share pictorial information rather than textual information on SCPs, such as pictures about products and lifestyles (Kim et al., 2017). However, just like with most Web 2.0 applications, image-sharing SCPs focus on a particular segment of consumers (e.g., females) or a particular product (i.e., lifestyle and fashion) (Liang & Turban, 2011).

In recent years, image-sharing SCPs have deeply enced the users’ consumption behavior, especially in the fash-ion segment. Represented by Instagram, it has become the biggest fashion source where the young are inspired by vari-ous fashion styles from celebrities and influencers. According to a survey by FacebookIQ (2017), 56% of the surveyed social media users consider Instagram as a major online platform for fashion shopping, significantly higher than 42% of those who cited Facebook. Similarly, a recent report shows that Pinterest users spend 80% more in retail than non-Pinterest users (Burnie, 2020). Meanwhile, a recent report indicated that customers tend to buy goods impulsively as 84% of consumers have purchased products without any particular plan, and approximately two-fifths of online consumption is purchased impulsively (Saleh, 2017). In addition, for image-sharing SCPs, impulse buying behavior is even more easily simulated because “a picture is worth a thousand words”, and the human brain can cruise through and process visual information up to sixty thousand times faster than the textual one (Tanda, 2017). The visualizing power of images has been also proven to trigger viewers’ emotions effectively (Messa-ris, 1997). These evidence suggests that image-sharing SCP users are more susceptible to impulse purchases than users of other social commerce platforms (Xiang et al., 2016). It is also worth noting that among different consumer groups, adoles-cents are prone to impulse buying (Liu et al., 2019) because adolescents’ skills for controlling impulse sentiments are not much dexterous, enabling them to try novel things and take more risks (Pechmann et al., 2005). Thus, when surfing on image-sharing SCPs (e.g., Instagram), the young are exposed to a volume of visual information from vendors, news, friends, celebrities, or experts, making it difficult for them to resist the temptation of impulse buying. Furthermore, adolescents also represent a sizable online market segment owing to their remarkable purchasing power (Statista Research Department, 2017) and heavy Internet usage (Liu et al., 2019).

influ-Given the prevalence of image-oriented SCPs and the importance of online impulse buying, understanding of

determinants of impulse buying on image-sharing SCPs has become essential (Liu et al., 2019). Extant literature has explored various factors that stimulate consumers to pur-chase impulsively on SCPs. They can be categorized into four main types: social factors (e.g., social presence, similar-ity), website-related factors (e.g., social interaction, informa-tion quality), consumer characteristics (e.g., impulsiveness, usage intensity), and marketing-related factors (e.g., product availability, aesthetic appeal) (Abdelsalam et al., 2020). How-ever, to the best of our knowledge, understanding of factors influencing consumer impulse buying behavior in the context of image-sharing SCPs has remained limited. Xiang et al. (2016) is a pioneer in studying impulse buying behavior on image-oriented SCPs that emphasized the role of parasocial interaction. Most recently, Djafarova and Bowes (2021) iden-tified three antecedents of impulse purchases on Instagram: advertisement, micro-celebrity, and user-generated content. In addition to these variables, we argue that other factors still exist that could well explain impulse buying behavior on image-sharing SCPs, yet have not been explored before.

To address the above mentioned gap, this study focuses on social comparison, which is a common social phenom-enon on SCPs, and explores its possible effects on impulse buying behavior. The association between social compari-son and impulse buying is expected to be more prominent on image-sharing SCPs rather than text-based or video-based SCPs due to its unique characteristics. Besides that, the underlying mechanism of relationship between social comparison on image-sharing SCPs as well as impulse buy-ing and the corresponding mediating mechanism (e.g., how this relationship occurs) and moderating mechanism (e.g., when the effect is stronger) remains inadequately explored. Identifying these mechanisms will provide a comprehen-sive understanding of how upward social comparison on image-sharing SCPs stimulates impulse buying behavior. Thus, this study attempts to enrich the existing literature by examining the mediating role of benign envy and the moderating role of self-esteem in the effect of upward social comparison on SCPs on impulse buying.

The contribution of this study is threefold. First, the study is grounded on social comparison theory to examine a model of impulse buying behavior in the context of image-sharing SCPs that had been rarely explored before. Second, while benign envy was considered an outcome of upward social comparison, this research is a pioneer in examin-ing it as a mediator between upward social comparison and impulse buying. Further, our study also sheds light on the moderating role of self-esteem on the effect of upward social comparisons on impulse buying. Third, the findings from this study can be helpful for companies and market-ers to reconsider the positive aspect of impulse buying on image-sharing SCPs and thus formulate more effective strat-egies to induce impulse buying among online consumers.

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Theoretical Background

Impulse Buying

Impulse buying was defined by Stern (1962) as an unplanned, captivating, and hedonically complicated pur-chasing behavior exhibited by consumers. This buying behavior usually occurs when the consumer has a sudden, solid, and irresistible desire to purchase a particular product immediately without considering the consequences (Park et al., 2012; Chen & Wang, 2016), and the purchase deci-sion is made in a short amount of time (Kim & Johnson, 2016). Notably, impulse buying possesses unique charac-teristics that distinguish it from other purchasing behavior types: unintended, unplanned, quick decision, inactive, and thoughtless (Abdelsalam et al., 2020). The literature has identified four distinct types of impulse purchases: pure, reminder, suggestive, and planned impulse buying (Stern, 1962). Consistent with Stern’s definition, most users’ buy-ing behavior on SCPs can be considered impulse buying (Xiang et al., 2016; Abdelsalam et al., 2020). For example, consumers browse images of clothes on SCPs purposeless and then decide to buy a blouse or T-shirt could be viewed as a purely impulsive purchase. In contrast, planned impulse buying occurs when consumers browse product images on the SCPs with a prepared shopping list but only purchase a particular product based on the offered discounts or promo-tions. A reminder impulse buying occurs when a user sees an image of a cosmetic product and realizes that his or her home stock is running low. Meanwhile, after seeing a new dress recommended by a SCP and purchasing it, it can be considered suggestive impulse buying.

So far, researchers have adopted many social and chological related theories to explain consumers’ online impulse buying behavior in social commerce from different

psy-angles. The theoretical foundations for existing online impulse-buying studies are presented in Table 1. Accord-ingly, the stimulus-organism-response (i.e., S-O-R) frame-work are the most prominent theoretical approach over the past decade. Impulse buying behavior in social commerce has also been explained with other theoretical approaches, such as flow theory (Hsu et al., 2012; Huang, 2016; Wu

Zafar et al., 2020a; Chen et al., 2016), social capital theory (Huang, 2016), social influence theory (Yang et al., 2021), uses and gratification theory (Zafar et al., 2020b). These diverse angles have offered a more in-depth and compre-hensive understanding of consumers’ online impulse buying on social commerce platforms. However, since the focus of this study is on image-sharing SCPs, which easily stimulate social interaction and comparison between users, we attempt to explain impulse buying under the perspective of social comparison using the social comparison theory.

Social Comparison Theory

Initially introduced by Festinger (1954), social comparison theory is a well-known psychological theory in explaining people’s tendency to compare themselves to others. The theory suggests that individuals have an innate drive to accurately evaluate their opinions and abilities by comparing themselves to others in the social world (Festinger, 1954; Liu et al., 2019). Based on social comparison theory, plenty of empirical studies have been conducted to offer insights into three aspects of social comparison, including comparison target selection (i.e., whom individuals choose to compare themselves to), comparison motivation (i.e., why individuals engage in social comparison), and comparison reaction (i.e., how individuals react to social comparison) (Gerber et al., 2018; Nakayama et al., 2018).

Table 1 Theoretical foundation of studies on impulse buying on social commerce

Theoretical foundationStudy

Cognitive emotion theoryVerhagen and Van Dolen (2011)

Flow theoryWu et al. (2020); Huang (2016); Hsu et al. (2012);Latent state-trait theoryZafar et al. (2021); Chen et al. (2016); Wells et al. (2011)Parasocial interaction theoryVazquez et al. (2020)

Reflective–impulsive modelShen and Khalifa (2012)

S–O–R frameworkMing et al. (2021); Zafar et al. (2020a); Zheng et al. (2019); Chen and Yao (2018); Leong et al. (2018); Xiang et al. (2016); Zhang et al. (2014); Floh and Madlberger (2013); Shen and Khalifa (2012)Social capital theoryHuang (2016)

Social influence theoryYang et al. (2021)Social impact theoryChuang et al. (2015)Social network paradigmHusnain et al. (2016)Uses and gratification theoryZafar et al. (2020b)

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Regarding comparison target selection, individuals tend to compare themselves with those who have similarities (Buunk & Gibbons, 2007; Li, 2018). In general, schol-ars have identified two main types of social comparison: upward social comparison and downward social comparison. Upward social comparison occurs when individuals compare themselves with others who are superior or better than they are. In contrast, downward social comparison occurs when people compare themselves with others who are worse than themselves (Liu et al., 2019). A recent meta-analysis study on the social comparison (Gerber et al., 2018) reports that individuals generally prefer making upward comparisons to downward comparisons. While upward social comparison can lower self-regard (Tesser et al., 1988), Collins (2000) argued that this was not always the case. In many situations, individuals compare themselves to others who are bet-ter than themselves to obtain more useful information for evaluating themselves (Buunk & Gibbons, 2007; Festinger, 1954), developing a positive self-image (Park & Park, 2017), or creating a sense of belonging to a superior group and enhance their perception of individual worth (Collins, 2000).

With the recent emergence of image-sharing SCPs, social comparison has become more ubiquitous. We find several features on image-sharing SCPs that facilitate upward social comparison. First, celebrities and influencers often share relevant images of sponsored products and services onto image-sharing SCPs for advertising purposes. Users, thereby, can quickly come across these perfect and beautiful images that stimulate them to make comparisons. Second, image-sharing SCPs operate on SNSs with many commer-cial activities while SNSs are a fertile ground for upward social comparison (Taylor & Strutton, 2016). Third, with increasing time for using SNSs, users stand a higher chance of approaching comparison-making stimulus on image-shar-ing SCPs through a glimpse at advertisements (Liu et al., 2019). Therefore, upward social comparison on image-shar-ing SCPs may happen when users look at captivating images of online celebrities in terms of their superior possessions and appearance.

Research Model and Hypotheses Development

We build on the social comparison theory to propose the research model (see Fig. 1) consisting of four constructs. The model explains how impulse buying behavior on image-sharing SCPs is influenced by upward social comparison, benign envy, and self-esteem.

Upward Social Comparison, Benign Envy, and Impulse Buying

Existing literature on social comparison has identified two opposing types of consequences from upward social com-parison. On the one hand, when individuals compare them-selves with others who are better than themselves, they will feel inferior about themselves (de Vries & Kühne, 2015), leading to some negative emotions or outcomes, such as depression (Li, 2018), mental health damage (Jang et al., 2016). On the other hand, upward social comparison can also bring positive benefits, such as enhancing job per-formance (Cadsby et al., 2019) or eliciting inspiration on SNSs (Meier & Schäfer, 2018). Notably, some scholars have recently paid much attention to a common post-comparison emotion on SNSs, namely envy (Ahn et al., 2021; de Vries & Kühne, 2015), which is defined as a painful experience when facing the good fortune of others (Tai et al., 2012). In general, there are two types of envy: malicious envy and benign envy (Smith & Kim, 2007). Malicious envy views envy from a negative perspective that may carry harmful consequences, such as burnout (Liu & Ma, 2018) or fear of missing out (Yin et al., 2019), while benign envy considers envy from a positive perspective. Although malicious envy is the traditional and dominant approach, benign envy has gained more attention from scholars in recent studies due to its positive nature. The latter approach emphasizes how envy can motivate individuals to excel and achieve desired things by improving themselves, rather than bringing the envied targets down (Li, 2018; Crusius & Lange, 2014).

Fig. 1 The research model

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The logic mentioned above can be applied in the current study. When making social comparison, people realize that they lack and desire something others have, such as possessions, superior qualities, or achievements, leading to feeling of envy (Li, 2018). Prior studies have concurred that envy often comes from the upward social comparison (Ahn et al., 2021; Lange & Crusius, 2015; Li, 2018; Zheng et al., 2018). Suls et al. (2002) found that making a social comparison is a way to fulfill their need for self-enhancement. In the context of image-sharing SCPs, the appeal-ing images of products and appearance of other users, especially celebrities and influencers, are the key to intuitively arousing upward social comparison. After making upward social com-parison with images of deemed superior celebrities, consumers may form a sense of benign envy that spurs them to take action in self-improvement to obtain the desired thing similar to that possessed by the compared one (Crusius & Mussweiler, 2012;

to get caught up in thoughtless behaviors (i.e., impulse buying) to get the desired items quickly. The effect of benign envy on a desire to buy luxury fashion items has been validated in a recent study by Loureiro et al. (2020). Accordingly, we hypothesize that:

H1. Upward social comparison on image-sharing SCPs

is positively associated with benign envy.

H2. Benign envy is positively associated with impulse

buying on image-sharing SCPs.

The social comparison theory indicates that individuals tend to evaluate themselves by comparing with others about owned assets or consumption behaviors (Festinger, 1954). When brows-ing SCPs, users are immersed in a colossal amount of information and pictures from other users, especially from celebrities and influ-encers on online advertisements (Xiang et al., 2016; Abdelsalam

com-parison with the advertising pictures of celebrities or influencers on image-sharing SCPs would provoke cravings for desired prod-ucts. Hence, we argue that users are easily stimulated by the visual appeal to make social comparisons and then purchase products impulsively. The association between upward social comparison and impulse buying has been validated in some contexts, such as SNSs (Liu et al., 2019) and superior goods (Crusius & Mussweiler, 2012). Accordingly, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H3. Upward social comparison on image-sharing SCPs

is positively associated with impulse buying.

The Moderating Role of Self‑esteem

Although upward social comparison and benign envy are expected to impact impulse buying behavior positively, the impacts may not be the same among adolescents. Some individ-ual characteristics may moderate these effects, for example, self-esteem. Self-esteem refers to an individual’s subjective evaluation

of their worth and denotes how individuals feel about themselves (Rosenberg, 1965; Wang et al., 2017). Self-esteem is an attrac-tive psychological construct since it is used to predict or explain certain outcomes, such as counterproductive working behaviors (Whelpley & McDaniel, 2016), fashion clothing involvement (Khare et al., 2012), and depression (Zhou et al., 2020).

In addition, past research has been attentive to the importance of self-esteem degree (i.e., low self-esteem and high self-esteem) and empirically indicated that self-esteem exerts a moderating role between some psychological variables (e.g., Ahmad & Begum, 2020; Lee et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2018a, ). For example, Wang

was stronger for SNSs users with low self-esteem than those with high self-esteem. Some scholars posited that the lower self-esteem users seem to feel satisfied in life and benefit more from their use of Facebook than the higher self-esteem users (Chen & Bello, 2017; Lee et al., 2018). Regarding image-sharing SCPs, little research has explored the moderating role of self-esteem on the indirect relations between upward social comparison and users’ impulse buying behav-ior. Verplanken et al. (2005) posited that low self-esteem individuals find impulse buying difficult to avoid while Dhandra (2020) sug-gested that low self-esteem individuals are fall victim to impulsivity. Therefore, we predict that when making social comparisons with the superior on image-sharing SCPs, low self-esteem consumers are more susceptible to impulse buying, compared to high self-esteem ones. Additionally, when the sense of benign envy occurs after mak-ing the upward social comparison, lower self-esteem individuals are more likely to purchase goods impulsively to quell the gap with the compared people. Accordingly, we propose the following hypotheses:

H4a. Self-esteem negatively moderates the relationship

between upward social comparison and impulse buying on image-sharing SCPs.

H4b. Self-esteem negatively moderates the relationship

between benign envy and impulse buying on image-sharing SCPs.

Research Methodology

Sample and Data Collection

The research model was tested using data collected from dents in the three most prominent universities in the south of Vietnam through convenience sampling method. The partici-pants were asked to complete questionnaires provided directly by the authors. The college students were chosen as respondents for two main reasons. First, prior scholars argued that adolescents are more impulsive than adults and children (Pechmann et al., 2005). Second, teenagers tend to spend more time on social media compared to children and adults (Ballard, 2019). There-fore, the image or information presented on SCPs may offer ado-lescents ample opportunities to make social comparisons. More-over, many prior studies have suggested that it is appropriate to use college student samples in online impulse buying research

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stu-because young people are the predominant online consumers (e.g., Liu et al., 2019; Chan et al., 2017; Abdelsalam et al., 2020).

Before proceeding to the official survey, the pilot study was ducted with 50 students to determine the feasibility of this research. The Cronbach’s alpha values of all constructs in the pilot test were higher than 0.7 (e.g., 0.916 for upward social comparison, 0.907 for impulse buying, 0.921 for benign envy, and 0.930 for self-esteem). The results demonstrate that the questionnaire is reliable. The official survey was conducted in ten weeks, from March to May 2020. A total of 361 students completed the survey questionnaire. After remov-ing 43 invalid responses, the final sample included 318 respondents. Among them, 141 (44.3% are male) and 177 (55.7%) are female. Respondents’ ages range between 18 and 24. Besides, 67 respond-ents (21.1%) are freshman, 112 (35.2%) are second-year students, 95 (29.8%) are third-year students and 44 (13.9%) are senior. More than half of surveyed students (51.9%) spent from 1 to 3 h per day, and only 18.9% of respondents spent less than 1 h per day using SCPs.

The present research model consisted of four latent constructs, in which each construct was measured with multiple items. The measurement items used in this research were adapted from rel-evant studies discussed in the foregoing section. Accordingly, the scale for upward social comparison on image-sharing SCPs was measured with six items adapted from Bai et al. (2013). Benign envy scale was assessed with five items adapted from Lange and Crusius (2015). Self-esteem scale was adopted from Rosenberg (1965) with ten items. Impulse buying was measured with eight items adapted from Badgaiyan et al. (2016) and Verplanken and Herabadi (2001). All measurement items were rated on a seven-point Likert scale (i.e., 1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree) and provided in Appendix A, Table 6.

Control Variables

Prior studies have suggested age, gender, and monthly living expenditure were related to students’ impulse buying behaviors (Vohs & Faber, 2007). Additionally, Arampatzi et al. (2018) dem-onstrated that the amount of time on SNSs significantly influenced students’ well-being. Thus, this study included gender and amount of time on SCPs per day as two control variables in the research model to limit their confounding effects on the dependent variable.

We utilized structural equation modeling (SEM) as the main data analysis method. We followed the two-step approach (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988) to test the measurement model and structural model.

Measurement Model

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to evaluate the measurement model’s overall fit, reliabil-ity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity using AMOS software. First, the goodness of fit is evaluated via six indexes suggested by Bagozzi and Yi (1988), including

index (GFI > 0.90), adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI >0.90); normed fit index (NFI > 0.90), comparative fit index (CFI > 0.90), and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA <0.08). As shown in Table 2, all goodness-of-fit indices exceed the recommended cut-off values, indicating that the measurement model is relevant to the collected data.

Second, Cronbach’s alpha (CA) and composite reliability (CR) were employed to examine the reliability of all vari-ables. As illustrated in Table 2, the CA and CR values are higher than the recommended threshold of 0.70 (Hair et al., 2010). Thus, the reliability of all variable is satisfied.

Third, the convergent validity was evaluated by two criteria, including (1) average variance extracted (AVE) of variables and (2) factor loadings index. Table 2 shows that the AVE for all variables is greater than 0.50 (Fornell & Larcker, 1981), and all factor loadings are significantly greater than 0.60 (Hair et al., 2010), supporting convergent validity of the instrument.

Fourth, the discriminant validity is evaluated by ing the AVE with the square of the correlation parameters. As shown in Table 3, the AVE values of each construct are higher than the square of correlations between that and any other construct, demonstrating a solid discriminant validity (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). In addition, the confidence inter-val of correlation coefficients does not include the value of 1, confirming sufficient discriminant validity.

compar-Because this study used the self-reported survey to collect data, the likelihood of common method variance (CMV) is a concern. Following suggestions of Podsakoff et al. (2012), we took more efforts to minimize the effects of CMV by guaranteeing the respondent anonymity and pre-testing the scale items adapted from previous stud-ies. In addition, we performed Harman’s one-factor test to examine the severity of CMV. As a result, the explana-tory variance for the first factor is 33.87%, lower than the threshold of 50% (Podsakoff et al., 2012). Therefore, the problem of CMV is not serious in this study.

Structural Model

df (150) = 2.521, RMSEA = 0.069, NFI = 0.917, RFI = 0.905, GFI = 0.900, IFI = 0.948, TLI = 0.941 and CFI = 0.948. These indices are acceptable (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988), indicating that the structural model achieves overall fit.

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The results of the structural model are provided in Table 4 and Fig. 2. Accordingly, upward social comparison on SCPs has significant and positive effect on benign envy (coeffi-

cient path = 0.727, p < 0.001) and impulse buying (coefficient path = 0.386, p < 0.001), supporting H1 and H3. In addition, the

influence of benign envy on impulse buying is significant and

positive (coefficient path = 0.532, p < 0.001), confirming H2.

Figure 2 also shows the values of explained variances for benign

demonstrate that the model achieves good explanatory power.Besides that, to identify whether the inclusion of the control variables (i.e., gender, usage time on SCPs per day) influences interpretation of the results of the proposed model (Spector & Brannick, 2011), we conducted a SEM analysis using bootstrap 2.000 re-samples. The two control variables were inserted between upward social comparison on SCPs and impulse buying to inves-tigate whether these relationships can still be supported with the effect of the control variables. As a result, all hypotheses are still supported when adding the two control variables. Thus, the control variables do not have a bias towards the current outcomes.

Mediating Effect of Benign Envy

To examine the mediating role of benign envy in the ciation between upward social comparison on SCPs and impulse buying, we used model 4 of PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2013; Hayes et al., 2017) and bootstrapping method

asso-Table 2 Reliability and convergent validity of the measurement model

CR = Composite reliability; AVE = Average variance extracted, ***: p < 0.001

Goodness-of- fit indexes: χ2/df (371) = 1.220, RMSEA = 0.026, CFI = 0.988, NFI = 0.938, GFI = 0.911, AGFI = 0.896

Upward social comparison on

USC20.802 ***USC30.715 ***USC40.755 ***USC50.777 ***USC60.861 ***

EV20.810 ***EV30.779 ***EV40.797 ***EV50.851 ***

IB20.807 ***IB30.788 ***IB40.756 ***IB50.758 ***IB60.763 ***IB70.841 ***IB80.851 ***

SE20.832 ***SE30.783 ***SE40.746 ***SE50.779 ***SE60.777 ***SE70.753 ***SE80.728 ***SE90.792 ***SE100.851 ***

Table 3 The correlation matrix and discriminant validity

N = 318. Average variances extracted (AVEs) are in boldThe correlation coefficients are in italics

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(with bootstrap resamples N = 5000). Table 5 shows that the 95% bias-corrected confidence interval for the indirect effect of benign envy on impulse buying is between 0.144 and 0.317, which excludes the value of zero. The mediating path

is also significant (β = 0.226; p < 0.001). The results confirm

that benign envy mediates the effect of upward social parison on SCPs on impulse buying.

com-Moderating Effect of Self‑esteem

To examine moderating role of self-esteem, we used model 59 of PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2013; Hayes et al., 2017). First, the direct effect of self-esteem on impulse buying was significant

(p < 0.01). Next, we examined whether interaction term

(self-esteem x upward social comparison) has a significant effect on impulse buying. The result shows a significant interaction effect (β = −0.09, p = 0.024 < 0.05), indicating that self-esteem negatively moderates the relationship between upward social comparison on SCPs and impulse buying. Thus, the H4a is sup-ported. In addition, the effect of interaction term (self-esteem x benign envy) on impulse buying is also significant (β = 0.12, p = 0.006 < 0.01). This result suggests that self-esteem moderates the relationship benign envy and impulse buying, but this mod-erating effect is positive. Thus, the H4b is partially supported.

self-esteem reports a higher level of impulse buying when making comparisons on SCPs. It means that the positive effect of upward social comparison on SCPs on impulse buy-ing is more pronounced when self-esteem is low rather than when it is high. However, the positive effect of benign envy on impulse buying is strengthened for consumers with high level of self-esteem (see Fig. 4).

This study set out to examine the effect of upward social comparison on impulse buying in the context of image-shar-ing SCPs through a moderated mediation model, in which benign envy is a mediator and self-esteem is a moderator. Overall, the empirical results lend support to all proposed hypotheses. In the following, the key findings of this study are discussed in more detail.

First, the results confirm a significant and positive effect of upward social comparison on benign envy. The result deepens our understanding of how benign envy was elicited by upward social comparisons occurring on image-sharing SCPs. This finding is consistent with extant literature (e.g., Latif et al., 2021; Appel et al., 2016) which indicates that social compari-son on Facebook elicits benign envy. Additionally, the finding is

Table 4 Path coefficients and significances

USC = Upward social comparison on SCPs,

EV = Benign envy, IB = Impulse buying, *** p < 0.001

HypothesisPathStandardized path

coefficient ResultH1USC ➔ EV0.727***SupportH2EV ➔ IB0.532***SupportH3USC ➔ IB0.386***Support

Fig. 2 The path coefficients of research model. USC = Upward social comparison on SCPs, BE = Benign envy; SE = Self-

esteem. *** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05

Table 5 Mediating effect testing result

USC = Upward social comparison on SCPs, EV = Benign envy,

IB = Impulse buying, *: p < 0.001

PathIndirect effect95% Confidence interval

LowerUpperUSC ➔ EV ➔ IB0.226***0.1440.317

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also consistent with the study of Li (2018) that adolescents are still developing their own self-concept, which is conducive to self-evaluating and self-improving. Nevertheless, due to a lack of objective standards for self-evaluation, they tend to take the better people as a yardstick to evaluate themselves, thus eas-ily exposing themselves to envy. Furthermore, image-sharing SCPs users are more likely to be visually appealed by product images featured by online celebrities or influencers who have a vast number of media followers (Djafarova & Rushworth, 2017; Pittman & Reich, 2016). As a result, image-sharing SCP users

are prone to make upward social comparisons with these digital celebrities, prompting benign envy.

Second, upward social comparison on SCPs affects impulse buying directly and indirectly. On the one hand, the direct effect of upward social comparison on impulse buying suggests that users are susceptible to impulse purchases after upwardly comparing with digital celebrities on Instagram or Pinterest whose captivating pictures are advertised for specific products. It also consolidates the findings from prior studies in various contexts, such as social networking sites (Liu et al., 2019) and

Fig. 3 Plotted interaction of upward social comparison on SCPs and self-esteem on impulse buying

Fig. 4 Plotted interaction of benign envy and self-esteem on impulse buying

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Understanding how upward social comparison stimulates impulse buying on image‑sharing social commerce platforms: A moderated mediation model of benign envy and self‑esteem / Trần Văn Đạt

Understanding how upward social comparison stimulates impulse buying onimage-sharing social commerce platforms: A moderated mediation model ofbenign envy and self-esteem

<b>Understanding how upward social comparison stimulates impulse buying on image‑sharing social commerce platforms: A moderated mediation model of benign envy and self‑esteem</b>

<b>Theoretical Background</b>

<b>Research Model and Hypotheses Development</b>

<b>Research Methodology</b>

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