I have always noticed when I go to a different place, no matter the destination; I always end up spending more money than I normally would at home. This has always interested me and I wanted to learn more. I do it in NYC where I buy cool, Instagram-worthy food (often priced higher). It also happened in Florence, where I bought many souvenirs just because I thought I had to. Where does this weird pressure to buy come from? I did some research to find out!
I looked at the survey, The Effects of Social Influence and Cognitive Dissonance on Travel Purchase Decisions conducted by Sarah Tanford and Rhonda Montgomery. In this survey, they look at the social influence theory developed by Crano in 2000, along with the cognitive dissonance theory proposed by Festinger in 1957. These theories show the effects on consumers travel purchasing decisions. Cognitive dissonance is when you are in the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change. I also looked at the results of that survey and the effect it has on society as a whole. I chose to look at this research, because I feel that it relates to my purchasing habits as a student when I travel as cognitive dissonance and social influence theories predicted it would.
Tanford and Montgomery knew that both theories have been used to look at purchasing decisions while on vacation, but they felt that hospitality vacation purchases by students had rarely been looked at in regards to social influence and cognitive dissonance. They decided to look at students headed on vacation for spring break and what decisions they would make regarding their living space. The researchers wanted to see if the participants would chose an environmentally friendly living space or one that was not so much. For the social influence aspect, they used traveler’s reviews to see if those would sway the students one way or another. These reviews were either favorable or unfavorable. It was then discovered that “[s]ubjects were less likely to choose a green resort when a minority of reviews favored that resort,” (Montgomery & Tanford, 2015). To go along with this it was also found that “[s]ubjects with strong pro-environmental attitudes experienced dissonance when making a nongreen choice in this situation,” (Mongomery & Tanford, 2015). This was the students’ experiencing cognitive dissonance, therefore proving that social influence does have an effect on cognitive dissonance and travel purchase decisions.
I believe that this study relates back to all environmentally friendly purchasing habits. Of course, we all live on the Earth and want to protect it, but it doesn’t change some of the behaviors we have grown accustomed to in our lives. T-shirts are a wardrobe staple for some that say they are helping the environment by not wearing fast fashion or luxury goods, but they are in fact doing the same amount of damage. To produce a cotton T-shirt it takes about 700 gallons of water (WWF, 2017). That water that is now filled with chemicals is going to find its way back into the water cycle. This is consistent with cognitive dissonance, because some consumers may even be aware of this fact, but “forget” about it to continue thinking that they are saving the environment.
The students surveyed did encounter that conflict when they did care for the environment, but because the place had bad reviews they chose to go with the less environmentally friendly option. This was the work of social influence. This relates to an example of a person who knows smoking is bad, but does it anyway. These students choosing their housing for spring break know that the poorly rated place also happens to be environmentally friendly, which they agree with and like, but because they have been influenced by the negative reviews about it will choose the not so environmentally friendly living space to comply with others social influence.
To summarize, social influence definitely affects our vacation purchasing habits, whether they are small things like souvenirs or the hotel itself. We may choose to ignore the benefits like a “green” living space for the simple fact of complete strangers telling you that it is bad.