69 Chapter 4 Theoretical Background and Hypotheses Development The promising role of mindfulness in diminishing impulse buying. Mindfulness is an attentive state where one is aware of the present moment. Regardless of whether mindfulness is perceived as a trait, state, or practice, attention to and awareness of the ‘here and now’ are core elements of mindfulness (Lu & Huffman, 2017). A substantial number of scholars researching mindfulness include a fourth dimension in the definition of mindfulness: acceptance (e.g., Brown et al., 2007; Park & Dhandra, 2017; Dhandra, 2020). Mindfulness entails bringing one’s attention to the present moment, being aware of the current experience -including one’s sensations- and accepting this experience without judgment (Yiğit, 2020). These four dimensions of mindfulness have frequently been studied in relation to constructs relevant to impulse buying. Mindful attention and awareness can help people consciously experience what is going on within themselves, such as recognizing certain thoughts (Thupten, 2019), understanding their physical reactions to food stimuli (e.g., Papies, Barsalou, & Custers, 2012), and detecting their impulsive urge to buy (Lu & Huffman, 2017). Attention and awareness can help people realize that internal reactions to external stimuli stand apart from one’s identity (Shapiro et al., 2006) and are transitory (Papies, Barsalou, & Custers, 2012). Consequently, people can better control their impulsive responses to food stimuli, for example, than people who did not gain this realization (Papies, Barsalou, & Custers, 2012, also see Marquis et al., 2019 on mindless eating). In line with these results, Cheung and Ng (2019) found a longitudinal relationship between mindful awareness and impulse control. Furthermore, Vohs and Faber (2007) argued that awareness of emotions and thoughts possibly helps prevent impulsive behavior. Present focus and acceptance help people become more open to their experiences, resulting in fewer negative thoughts about themselves (Hildebrandt, Mccall, & Singer, 2017) and increased self-esteem (Gong, Tan, & Huang, 2022). Both can counter various types of impulsive behavior (Gong, Tan, & Huang, 2022) and impulse buying tendencies (Dhandra, 2020). Additionally, acceptance can help people refrain from acting upon emotions and other internal stimuli (Vihari et al., 2022), which might also prevent impulse purchases since acting upon emotions is an important predictor of impulse buying (Iyer, 2020). Consistent with these results, multiple empirical studies have found a negative relationship between trait mindfulness and impulse buying trait (e.g., Park & Dhandra, 2017; Geiger, Grossman, & Schrader, 2019; Dhandra, 2020). For robustness reasons, this study aims to replicate this result in two countries (the USA and the Netherlands). Therefore, we formulated the following hypothesis: H1: Trait mindfulness and impulse buying trait are negatively related.
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