Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2018

Publication Title

Journal of the Association for Consumer Research

Volume

3

Issue

1

Pages

46-62

Publisher Name

The University of Chicago Press

Abstract

The term “risky consumption” elicits visions of extreme contexts, such as leaping from a moving airplane at 30,000 feet above ground or using illicit hallucinogenic drugs. However, this study aims to answer the call for understanding risk that is inherent in consumers’risk-laden life events. Specifically, we examine the process by which consumers use digital virtual consumption (DVC) to negotiate tensions related to risk and the implications that this process holds for consumers’ identity narratives. Findings demonstrate how consumers, upon a triggering risk-laden life event, can turn to DVC to both cope with risk, as well as to engage in pleasurable risk. The research extends the theoretical understandings of risk and identity as intertwined with DVC. Managerial and social welfare implications are also offered.

Comments

Author Posting © The University of Chicago Press, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of The University of Chicago Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The article was published in Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, Volume 3, Issue 1, 2018, http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/695700

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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