Coping: A Multidimensional, Hierarchical Framework of Responses to Stressful Consumption Episodes

Abstract

This research explores a phenomenon that pervades many realms of consumer behavior-the various ways that consumers cope with stress and negative emotions. In study 1, I generate and test a multidimensional scale to measure the coping construct, revealing a more diverse set of strategies than accounted for in the consumer literature on coping. I test competing theories about the hierarchical structure of the coping construct. Study 2 validates these findings and begins to establish theoretical links between the coping dimensions and their antecedent relationships with discrete emotions. In contrast to extant research linking emotions and coping, which has only investigated main effect hypotheses, I conceptualize and find empirical evidence for a model in which emotions interact with appraisals jointly to enact coping strategies. This research contributes to the emerging consumer coping literature by enriching existing theoretical conceptualizations of consumer coping processes and by validating a scale that should prove useful in consumer research. (c) 2005 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..