Garaus Marion, Garaus Christian
Department of International Management, Modul University Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Institute of Marketing and Innovation, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria.
Front Psychol. 2021 Mar 1;12:646593. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.646593. eCollection 2021.
One sector that severely suffers from the outbreak of the coronavirus is carsharing (i.e., short-term car access). The downswing of the carsharing industry may not only experience negative economic consequences but also ecological ones. Carsharing has the potential to reduce emissions, occupied space, and congestion and hence can actively contribute to mitigating climate change. As Bill Gates strikingly states: "Covid-19 is awful. Climate change could be worse." For this reason, it is important to understand which underlying mechanisms drive carsharing usage during the Covid-19 pandemic. The current research has the overall objective to provide deeper insights into the mediating mechanisms that explain carsharing usage intention during the Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, we draw on signaling theory to explore how different claims (environmental claims, safety claims) that prompt two different opposing underlying processes (perceived ecological benefits, perceived physical risk) influence carsharing usage intention. An online experiment employing a 3 (environmental claim vs. safety claim vs. no claim) × 2 (high information diagnosticity vs. low information diagnosticity) between-subjects design with participants acquired by the online panel platform Clickworker was conducted in April 2020. Fictitious labels and fictitious advertisements served as stimulus material and constituted the five experimental conditions. The data were analyzed by a multicategorial moderated mediation analysis and a multivariate analysis of covariance. Results reveal that environmental claims can stimulate perceived ecological benefits, which, in turn, positively affect carsharing usage intention. Interestingly, our research demonstrates that safety claims cannot decrease perceived physical risk in the context of Covid-19 and carsharing. Nevertheless, perceived physical risk has a (marginal) negative influence on carsharing usage intention and hence should not be discarded altogether. The findings of this article offer new insights into the mental processes that guide consumer decision-making during the coronavirus crisis and also offer important policy implications by highlighting the relevance of environmental claims during the Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the negative influence of perceived physical risk on carsharing usage intention points to the need for alternative measures to reduce users' risk perceptions.
受冠状病毒爆发冲击严重的一个领域是汽车共享（即短期使用汽车）。汽车共享行业的衰退不仅可能带来负面经济后果，还可能产生生态后果。汽车共享有潜力减少排放、占用空间和拥堵，因此可以积极助力缓解气候变化。正如比尔·盖茨所言：“新冠疫情很可怕。气候变化可能更糟。”因此，了解在新冠疫情期间驱动汽车共享使用的潜在机制很重要。当前研究的总体目标是更深入地洞察解释新冠疫情期间汽车共享使用意愿的中介机制。具体而言，我们运用信号理论来探究不同的主张（环境主张、安全主张）如何引发两种不同的相反潜在过程（感知到的生态效益、感知到的身体风险），进而影响汽车共享使用意愿。2020年4月，我们通过在线面板平台Clickworker招募参与者，进行了一项采用3（环境主张组与安全主张组与无主张组）×2（高信息诊断性组与低信息诊断性组）组间设计的在线实验。虚拟标签和虚拟广告作为刺激材料，构成了五个实验条件。数据通过多类别调节中介分析和多变量协方差分析进行分析。结果显示，环境主张能够激发感知到的生态效益，进而对汽车共享使用意愿产生积极影响。有趣的是，我们的研究表明，在新冠疫情和汽车共享的背景下，安全主张并不能降低感知到的身体风险。尽管如此，感知到的身体风险对汽车共享使用意愿有（微弱的）负面影响，因此不应完全被忽视。本文的研究结果为冠状病毒危机期间指导消费者决策的心理过程提供了新见解，同时通过强调新冠疫情期间环境主张的相关性，也提供了重要的政策启示。此外，感知到的身体风险对汽车共享使用意愿的负面影响表明，需要采取替代措施来降低用户的风险认知。
