本研究探讨消费决策中羊群行为的心理机制。研究1通过操纵观点说服力的强弱探索消费者的信息加工方式。结果发现,羊群行为是消费者采用一致性启发式或能力启发式的结果。研究2通过操纵群体内部的一致性程度考察两种启发式的适用条件。结果表明,在一致性程度高的情况下,消费者倾向于采用一致性启发式;在一致性低的情况下,消费者倾向于采用能力启发式。
The herd behavior was found in investment behavior for the first time. Many researchers explored the psychological mechanism of investors' herd behavior. They regarded the herd behaviors of investor as the result of using heuristics when they were faced with an uncertain investment situation. Consumers, however, also displayed this type of behavior. It refers to the behavior that consumers follow others' decisions under an uncertain situation. As whether or not the psychological mechanism of consumers' herd behavior is the same as the investors' remained a question, we explored the psychological mechanism of consumers' herd behavior in the laboratory by simulating situations of consumption. We conducted two studies. The first studied the way of information processing with the quality of message manipulated. In the pre-experiment, we used a questionnaire about the portable computer to get the information consumers are concerned or unconcerned about. The results showed that consumers paid more attention to some information including CPU, memory, disk, radiation and so on, but they did not care about the information about the number of USB slots. According to the results, we prepared the experimental material. Then we conducted a 3 (resource of information: majority, expert and none) × 2 (quality of message: strength and weak) between-subject design. Consequently, if the resource of information was majority or experts, the herd behavior would appear. On the other hand, the result revealed that the herd behavior came as a result of consumers using consensus heuristics or competence heuristics. In the second research, we conducted a 3 (the degree of consensus: a high degree of consensus of choosing A, a high degree of consensus of choosing B and a low degree of consensus) × 2 ( the existence of experts or not) between-subject design to test the condition that two heuristics were applicable. The results indicated that when consumers were faced with a high degree of consensus, they woul