Can awe influence the way we adopt innovations?
The moderating role of one’s nature relatedness and openness to experience
Master Thesis
Violeta Milkova
2
Can awe influence the way we adopt innovations?
The moderating role of one’s nature relatedness and openness to experience
Master Thesis 18 June 2018 Violeta Milkova Author s3420760 v.g.milkova@student.rug.nl Struisvodelstraat 17b 9713 BT Groningen Dr Yannick Joye 1st Supervisor y.joye@rug.nl
Dr Mehrad Moeni Jazani
2nd Supervisor m.moeini.jazani@rug.nl
MSc Marketing Management
3 ABSTRACT
Innovation takes up a huge part of today’s modern world and as such it is crucial for marketers to ensure its success. Innovation adoption has been identified as a “multistage process” in which different types of cognitive and affective domains are triggered in consumers’ minds. Specifically, affective responses are an important source of information for making decisions, forming attitudes and beliefs, and altering behaviour. More importantly, positive emotions are able to bias consumers’ judgements and evaluations. This implies that since affect is part of the innovation adoption process, positive emotions can be used to influence this process. This thesis focuses on studying the effects of one particular positive emotion, awe. Moderating effects of consumers’ openness to experience and nature relatedness are tested further. Results show no significant relationship between awe and innovation adoption or willingness to pay (WTP). However, moderating effects were found for some of the products. Finally, limitations and suggestions for future research are presented, as well as managerial implications.
Key words: innovation, innovation adoption, emotions, awe, smallness, openness to experience,
4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The process of writing this Master thesis turned out to be quite challenging for me. I would not have been able to finish this project without the help of everyone around me, thus I would like to take the time and express my sincere gratitude.
First of all, I am very thankful for having Dr Yannick Joye as a first supervisor, as I would have never been able to complete this thesis without his valuable and constructive feedback. His enthusiastic encouragements and positive attitude throughout the entire process are greatly appreciated. I could not thank him more for his invaluable guidance, useful suggestions and time devoted to my work concerning each and every part of this project. I would also like to thank my second supervisor, Dr Mehrad Moeni Jazani, for taking the time to go through my master thesis. I am also grateful for the support and helpful comments provided by the fellow students in my master thesis group. I wish to acknowledge my friends, who took the time to read the final draft version of my thesis and provided their constructive input and suggestions, helping me to improve it.
5 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ... 7 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ... 10 1. Literature Review... 10 What is an innovation? ... 10
Innovation Adoption Process... 11
Adopter characteristics ... 13 Emotions ... 15 Awe ... 16 Openness to experience ... 18 Nature Relatedness ... 19 2. Conceptual Model ... 20 3. Hypotheses ... 20 METHODOLOGY ... 21
1. Participants and Design... 21
2. Materials ... 21
3. Procedure ... 25
RESULTS ... 26
1. Data Preparation and Initial Analysis ... 26
2. Manipulation Check: Effect of Environmental Conditions on Emotion ... 26
3. Controlling for Participants’ Involvement and Product Innovativeness ... 28
4. Awe and Innovation Adoption ... 29
5. Awe and WTP ... 30
6. Openness to Experience as Moderator ... 31
7. Nature Relatedness as Moderator ... 33
8. Correlations ... 35
9. Exploratory Analysis ... 38
DISCUSSION ... 40
1. Summary of Findings ... 40
6
3. Recommendations for Further Research ... 43
4. Managerial Implications ... 45
5. Theoretical Implications and Conclusion ... 46
REFERENCES ... 47
7 INTRODUCTION
Have you ever reached a mountain peak or found yourself in front of a giant waterfall like Niagara Falls? Have you experienced the beauty of the Grand Canyon, the majesty of the northern lights in Iceland or any other beautiful nature scenery which reaches the horizon and makes you feel small compared to what stays in front of you? The list goes on, but what all those places have in common is the feelings and emotions that they are able to provoke in people. Can you recall the feelings and thoughts you have experienced in a similar situation? Now imagine that these emotions have the power to affect your perception and behavior.
The emotion that can leave you breathless for a moment and make your heart skip a beat from the beauty of what you have just seen is often referred to as awe in the academic literature. Even though it can be elicited by different stimuli (Keltner & Haidt, 2003), nature is often considered as the most common one (Zhang & Keltner, 2016). However, one might be wondering in what kind of situations can awe impact people’s behaviors. For instance, as a positive emotion in most of the cases, it has been proven to have various positive outcomes on individuals, such as prosociality and better mood (Joye & Bolderdijk, 2015), increased volunteering (Rudd, Vohs & Aaker, 2012), and generosity (Piff, Dietze, Feinberg, Stancato, & Keltner, 2015), among others. Often these effects are also associated with the diminishment of the self or feelings of smallness (Campos, Shiota, Keltner, Gonzaga & Goetz, 2013; Piff et al., 2015). These can serve as important insights for marketers who have the task of promoting any kind of prosocial behavior.
8 most. It would be of great advantage to have more insights into what factors influence consumers’ acceptance of innovations in order to achieve success of the product. However, there is lack of research particularly on the effects of experiencing awe on product innovation.
Innovation takes a huge part of people’s daily lives, ranging from convenience breakthrough developments, back in time, such as the electricity, going through inventions such as the automobile or the computer, which have become an important part of our life, to innovations nowadays such as self-driving cars, connected homes, augmented reality, artificial or virtual reality, robots and many more that have the potential to be huge part of the future modern society. Innovations of this scope had, to some extent, an immeasurable impact on the economy and are constantly changing people’s perception of the world (Verspagen, 2005). In most cases, the main goal of innovations is to increase productivity and deliver more value to the recipient, than is currently offered on the market (Arts, Frambach & Bijmolt, 2011).However, there are innovations that were never as popular as the above mentioned products (Verspagen, 2005). This implies that more efforts are needed from companies and academic researchers in order to better understand what drives innovation adoption and what are the factors that will influence consumers to a level at which a successful commercial application of the innovation is reached.
In fact, this is what the present study’s main goal will be. More narrowly, this research aims to find out whether experiencing awe from natural stimuli can positively influence product
innovation adoption.
9 and products he or she will be. This definition corresponds to some extent with one of the “Big Five” personality traits, openness to experience (Costa & McCrae, 1992). A person high on openness to experience is someone who is creative, innovative, imaginative and seeks new experiences (Zhao & Seibert, 2006). An established connection between awe and openness (Shiota, Keltner & John, 2006) further implies that openness to experience might influence the
relationship between awe and consumers’ attitudes towards innovation.
Another key point is that since nature is one of the most common elicitors of awe, it is also reasonable to take a closer look at the differences in which people feel connected to the natural world. This construct is known as nature relatedness. In addition, it is found to positively correlate with openness to experience (Nisbet, Zelenski & Murphy, 2009), a finding that makes it appropriate to infer that individual’s connectedness to nature could influence his or her attitude towards innovations. In other words, nature relatedness is hypothesized in this study to moderate
the relationship between awe and innovation adoption.
10 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
1. Literature Review
Both theoretically and empirically, innovation is well established as an important source of economic growth (Wong, Ho & Autio, 2005). This statement is also consistent with the work of Schumpeter. He also introduced the term “creative destruction”, which refers to the process of innovation development where a new process, idea or product completely destroys the old one (Schumpeter, 1942). In addition, Wong et al. (2005) found a significant relation between innovation and GDP growth in their study, but no relationship was found between innovation and business creation, so they argue that those two should be considered separately. Furthermore, it is through the help of innovation that eventually the general knowledge of an economy is increased, which in turn boosts R&D performance (Romer, 1990; Verspagen, 2005). Having in mind these findings, one can already sense the importance of processes such as the adoption of innovation for the overall success of the innovation itself, the organizations and the whole economy. However, it is essential that before going deeper into the innovation literature to explore innovation processes and influencing factors, a more extensive view of the innovation as a construct is presented.
What is an innovation?
“Innovation is change that creates a new dimension of performance.” (Peter Drucker)
11 relevant unit of adoption (Baregheh, Rowley, & Sambrook, 2009; Rogers, 2003; Zaltman, Duncan, & Holbek, 1973). In other words, in order to make an innovation successful, it is important for it to be adopted first. This makes the topic of innovation adoption central for scholars as well as for managers, entrepreneurs and marketers.
Marketers nowadays are constantly challenged with the task to advertise innovations in the most appropriate and effective way. Therefore, understanding consumer behaviour and attitudes, and more importantly, finding out what triggers those behaviours along the process of innovation adoption plays a vital role in today’s marketing world.
Innovation Adoption Process
Until now there is plenty of research on innovation and innovation adoption, which have been studied for about 50 years. Going back, Bass diffusion model is one of the most prominent and popular models among marketing scholars. Developed by Bass in 1969, the model takes into consideration the timing of the adoption as a major idea encompassing this construct. Bass, therefore, defines the innovation diffusion as “the probability that an initial purchase will be made at T given that no purchase has yet been made is a linear function of the number of previous buyers” (1969, p.216). In other words, the model uses as a basic assumption the relationship between the time of the adopter’s first purchase and the number of customers that have already adopted the product at that time.
12 complex have higher levels of adoption intention, as opposed to innovations with less complexity and higher relative advantage, which showed higher actual adoption.
Rogers (2003), argues that there is division of the innovation-decision process that involves five steps: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation. During the knowledge stage, an individual needs to be presented with the answers of three important questions about the innovation, namely “what”, “how” and “why” in order to form three different types of knowledge: awareness-knowledge, how-to-knowledge, and principles-knowledge. In the persuasion phase, the consumer forms positive or negative attitudes towards the innovation. After gaining sufficient knowledge and forming attitudes, an individual decides whether to adopt or reject the innovation. In the end, the innovation is being implemented and eventually reaches the confirmation stage, in which according to Rogers later adoption or discontinuance might occur, depending on the attitudes of the adopter.
13 Schwarz & Clore, 1983) through the “How do I feel about it?” heuristic. For example, this heuristic is often used in advertisements to make consumers feel in a certain way and consecutively transfer their emotions to the advertised product. Some advertisements make you feel happy or amused, so that you like the product more, whereas others might make you feel scared, sad or disgusted if the goal is to raise awareness or promote preventive behaviour.
Provided that emotions have their contribution in the early stages of the innovation adoption process, acting as more than just a function of gained benefits from the product (Wood & Moreau, 2006), and considering the “affect-as-information” hypothesis (Schwarz & Clore, 1983), i.e. the possibility of misattribution of feelings to products, it is also important to test whether evoking certain positive emotions and feelings in consumers can positively influence adoption itself. For scholars as well as marketers, it would be very useful knowledge to have, if there was better understanding of this process, i.e. the priming with exactly which positive emotions is most likely to influence adoption. However, research on this particular topic is scarce. For this reason, the current thesis will focus on studying the effects of evoking certain positive emotions in consumers and the influence of these emotions on innovation adoption. This study has the goal of researching whether initial priming of consumers with feelings of awe can influence their attitude towards product innovations. The concept of awe is further presented later in this review, but before that it is important to first emphasize on the characteristics of innovation adopter, as they make up an important part of the innovation adoption construct.
Adopter characteristics
14 socially-constructed and innovation-dependent personality characteristic which shows the extent to which an individual is adopting new products and ideas at an earlier stage and can be deciphered as one’s willingness to change (Van Braak, 2001; Hurt, Joseph, & Cook, 1977; Rogers 2003). Because of these characteristics, innovators can be an important part of the process of product innovation adoption (Im, Bayus, & Mason, 2003). Given that they are properly targeted by marketers, they can lead the basis of a successful later adoption.
Consumer innovativeness has been defined as “the general propensity of a consumer to adopt new products” (Arts et al., 2011). It is also important to mention that empirical evidence has been inconsistent in the findings of the relationship between consumer innovativeness and adoption behaviour, but according to Im, Mason & Houston (2007) the reason might be because of incomplete conceptual models. Hirunyawipada and Paswan (2006) tried to clarify this inconsistency by developing a hierarchical approach of looking at consumer innovativeness, categorizing it in different levels of abstraction. They distinguish three levels of consumer innovativeness – global innovativeness, domain-specific innovativeness and actualized innovativeness. Global innovativeness is also referred to as “innate innovativeness” and is described as a personality trait, reflecting one’s innate propensity to seek out new experiences and information, as well as adopting new products (Bartels & Reinders, 2011; Hirschman, 1980; Hirunyawipada & Paswan, 2006). The literature also distinguishes two components of innate innovativeness, i.e. cognitive and sensory component (Venkatraman & Price, 1990). Furthermore, as can be inferred from the name, the next type of innovativeness, domain-specific innovativeness is related to one’s predisposition to adopting products from a certain product category (Goldsmith & Hofacker, 1991). Finally, actualized innovativeness (or innovative behaviour) is defined as the extent to which an individual is earlier in acquiring new products and seeking out information about new products (Bartels & Reinders, 2011; Hirunyawipada & Paswan, 2006). In this line of thought, actualized innovativeness can be related to the above mentioned categorization of consumers by Rogers (2003).
15 communicated experience of others” (Midgley & Dowling, 1978, p. 236). This also draws the attention to the already explained as personality trait - innate innovativeness, which is described as a tendency to seek out new experiences (Hirschman, 1980). As a matter of fact, one of the big five personality traits has been related on one hand with innovativeness and the ability to experience new ideas (Zhao & Seibert, 2006), and on the other hand with positive emotions such as experiencing awe (Shiota et al., 2006). This consumer characteristic is openness to experience and the extant literature discussed until now makes it possible to infer that this trait is closely linked to the topic being researched with this thesis. Openness to experience will be discussed in more detail later in this review.
Emotions
16 Awe
“The potential power of awe, combined with the mystery of its mechanisms, may itself be a source of awe, giving pleasure both to those who study it and to those who cultivate it in their lives” (Keltner & Haidt, 2003, p. 312).
Imagine you stand before a spectacular mountain view or you have just got to the top of that mountain and this reveals immense natural view in front of you. Typically, what a person feels and experiences at that moment is well characterized as feeling awe.Situated in “the upper reaches of pleasure and on the boundary of fear” (Keltner & Haidt, 2003, p.297), awe is an emotion that has received relatively limited attention in the academic literature. Historically, it has been present and studied in fields like philosophy, sociology, religion and psychology (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). Moreover, it was primarily hard for scholars to define awe,because it was not characterized with specific facial expressions, it has many elicitors and there was no specified emotion’s function (Keltner & Haidt, 2003; Lazarus, 1991; Shiota et al., 2007). In the last few years, however, there have been a few studies done in order to better understand the concept, elicitors and effects of awe. For example, Keltner and Haidt (2003) identify seven different situations which, when encountered, induce awe – coming across a powerful leader, experiencing an encounter with God (or other supernatural creature), observing a tornado, grand vista, or cathedral, listening to awe-inspiring music, and grasping a grand theory.
Among the different elicitors of awe, the one that is usually most likely to evoke that emotion is the natural stimulus (Shiota et al., 2007). Additionally, various extant research papers have already incorporated awesome natural stimuli in order to test the effect of awe and it has been proven that they are able to properly elicit feelings of awe in people (Griskevicius, Shiota & Neufeld, 2010; Rudd et al, 2012; Valdesolo & Graham, 2014; Van Cappellen & Saroglou, 2012). This makes it highly relevant to take nature into account as source for priming people with awe for the purposes of the current study.
17 physical space and have physical size. It can also be in social size (e.g. authority, prestige or fame) or ability, as well as complexity of detail (e.g. art), time or in number (Keltner & Haidt, 2003; Shiota et al., 2007). Second, because those stimuli are larger than what a person is able to perceive, there is need for accommodation. Being expressed by the difficulty to assimilate any experience that includes vast stimuli, need for accommodation can result both in making the self feel terrified and powerless in case the person is not able to comprehend the awe-evoking stimuli, or it can be empowering and enlightening if the awestruck individual successfully accommodates the stimuli (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). Grand natural vistas and phenomena are important factor that accounts for both vastness and the need to accommodate what is unknown and bigger than the self (Keltner & Haidt, 2003; Zhang & Keltner, 2016).
Interestingly, research shows that experiencing awe involves challenging existing mental structures in order to accommodate new ones(Keltner & Haidt, 2003; Shiota et al., 2007). When an individual is successful in accommodating novel stimuli, he/she will be more willing to accept novel information, more open to mystery and new experiences (Shiota et al., 2006; Shiota et al., 2007; Van Cappellen & Saroglou, 2012). This suggests that after experiencing awe, an individual would be prone to accept innovation to a greater extent, inferring that there might be a close link between the two constructs. Moreover, an appropriate addition to this relationship would be to test whether the level of one’s openness to experience will have a moderating effect, since awe has been associated with this personality characteristic (Shiota et al., 2006).
Despite the positive outcomes of encountering awe, Gordon et al. (2017) explore threatening vast stimuli to underline the presence of “darker side” of awe (i.e. threat-based awe), characterised by lowered self-control and certainty, and higher levels of fear. From this, it can be concluded that in certain occasions awe can not only be a positive, but negative emotion as well. Supporting this notion are five other emotional experiences that enrich the concept of awe – threat, beauty, exceptional ability, virtue and supernatural (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). However, negative experience from awe can only be a consequence of failure in accommodating the vast stimuli, which creates confusion.
18 Campos & Keltner, 2003). In addition, awe is conveyed through a distinctive vocal burst that has ultimately been associated with this emotion (Simon-Tomas, Keltner, Sauter, Sinicropi-Yao, & Abramson, 2009).
Furthermore, awe has not only been studied in terms of elicitors and body expressions, but there are various studies aiming to reveal the consequences of feeling awe on perceptions and emotions, as well as attitudes and behaviour. In a study from 2013, Campos et al. explore different positive emotions and find out that feelings of awe, in comparison with other positive emotions, show significantly higher results in making people feel relatively small compared to environments or other individuals. Additionally, Piff et al. (2015) prove that awe results in diminishment of the self, which in turn can lead to higher generosity, prosocial values and increased ethical decision-making. Joye and Bolderdijk (2015), who took a closer look into awesome nature, showed that exposure to spectacular and impressive scenes leads to improvements in mood, as well as increased prosociality (i.e. people tend to feel closer and more connected to others). Moreover, the feeling of smallness, referred to as the “small self” is promoting altruism (Van Cappellen & Saroglou, 2012). Finally, awestruck people perceive that they have more time available, thus are more willing to volunteer their time to help others (Rudd et al., 2012).
Openness to experience
19 Altogether, what can be suggested after going through the literature on openness and what was already inferred earlier in this review, is that it can possibly have a moderating role on the influence of awe on innovation adoption. In other words, it can be hypothesized that openness to experience will positively influence the link between experiencing awe and innovation adoption.
Nature Relatedness
Having in mind that important functions of awe were already highlighted, it is appropriate to study the perceptual differences in experiencing awe, i.e. whether there is variance in the way it is felt among people in order to utilize its benefits optimally. Since nature will be used as elicitor of awe for this study, it is relevant to take a closer look at the probability that the extent to which one is connected to the natural world might have an impact on the effect of awe-eliciting nature on innovation adoption. It is unlikely that all people are experiencing the encounter with nature in the same way. These individual differences are known as nature relatedness (NR) construct. It refers to the affective, cognitive, and experiential relationship between individuals and nature and “encompasses one’s appreciation for and understanding of our interconnectedness with all other living things on the earth” (Nisbet et al., 2009, p.718). To emphasize, higher levels of nature relatedness facilitate positive affect, i.e. happiness (Zelenski & Nisbet, 2014), well-being and mindfulness (Howell, Dopko, Passmore & Buro, 2011), vitality and life satisfaction (Capaldi, Dopko & Zelenski, 2014).
Moreover, like awe, NR is found to correlate with openness to experience (Nisbet et al., 2009). The link between these constructs is further proved by Zhang, Howell and Iyer (2014) who show that people with stronger engagement with nature’s beauty and nature connectedness will benefit from its positive outcomes the most. Beauty is present as influencing factor both in the concept of openness to experience (McCrae, 2007) and awe (Keltner and Haidt, 2003), as discussed earlier. In addition, sensitivity to nature’s beauty promotes prosocial behaviour (Zhang, Piff, Iyer, Koleva, & Keltner, 2014).
20 2. Conceptual Model
The conceptual model shown below is a representation of the relationships inferred from the academic literature on awe, innovation adoption, openness to experience and nature relatedness (Figure 1).
Figure 1
Conceptual model
3. Hypotheses
The review of the extant research on awe, innovation adoption, nature relatedness and openness to experience leads to the following six hypotheses.
H1: Awe evoking nature affects positively product innovation adoption.
H2: Awe evoking nature affects positively WTP for product innovation.
H3: Openness to experience positively moderates the relationship between awe and product innovation adoption.
H4: Openness to experience positively moderates the relationship between awe and WTP for product innovation.
H5: Nature relatedness positively moderates the relationship between awe and product innovation adoption.
21 METHODOLOGY
1. Participants and Design
For the purposes of the study, a survey was designed and conducted using the online platform Qualtrics. It was distributed online through social media (e.g. Facebook, WhatsApp and LinkedIn), making use of online social groups and the snowball sampling technique, in other words participants were also distributing the survey to other participants. One hundred and three participants (63 females, 40 males, Mage = 24.79, SD = 5.25) took part in the questionnaire. Another five participants dropped out from the study and were therefore not included in the analyses. The study has a between-subjects design with two different randomly assigned conditions. “Environmental condition” (awesome vs. mundane nature) was the independent variable, and “Innovation adoption” (measuring innovation adoption and WTP) was the dependent variable. There were also moderating variables – “Nature relatedness” and “Openness to experience”.
2. Materials
Manipulation of awe. Participants were assigned to one of two possible videos, either of grand
nature, aimed at eliciting awe (https://goo.gl/j6Pxyq) or mundane nature (https://goo.gl/Njg2o5). The latter video originally lasted longer, therefore it was cut to be the same length as the former. In the grand nature condition (n = 49), the video showed aerial footage of vast natural scenes or phenomena from Iceland (e.g. mountain range, a sunset over the mountains, waterfalls, spectacular views of rivers running between the mountains), whereas the mundane nature condition (n = 51) consisted of video showing a walk in the forest. The videos were taken from YouTube and lasted approximately three minutes each.
22
Awe nature condition Mundane nature condition
Figure 2
Screenshots of the environmental conditions
Measuring awe. In order to measure the level of induced awe among participants, they were asked
to rate how they feel “at the moment” using two scales adopted from Piff et al. (2015). The scales were for emotion measurement and feeling of smallness. The former consists of the following seven items, measured on a 7-point Likert scale: “Amusement”, “Awe”, “Disgust”, “Anger”, “Fear”, “Happiness” and “Sadness” (1=strongly disagree and 7=strongly agree). The latter scale consisted of four items (e.g. “I feel small or insignificant.”), measured on a 7-point scale as well. Results for internal consistency reliability of the smallness scale were satisfactory (α = .83). The four items were averaged in a new variable called “Smallness”.
Innovation adoption. In order to measure the level of acceptance of innovation, participants were
presented with three different innovative products (car sharing taxi service, the taxi being a fully self-driving vehicle; TV with rollable display; burger with vegan meat). Each item was shown on a different page consisting of a picture and short scenario description (see appendix A). After each product page, participants’ product adoption was then measured in two ways.
23 .96). Therefore, items were averaged in one new variable for each product, in order to be used for further analysis.
After that, participants were also asked the minimum and maximum amount of money they are willing to pay (WTP), for example, “The minimum price I am willing to pay (in euros) for this TV with rollable display is ...” and “The maximum price I am willing to pay (in euros) for this TV with rollable display is ...”. Those were open questions, where participants were able to state their personal WTP.
Apart from that, the survey included controlling measures for participants’ product involvement and products’ innovativeness. Innovativeness of the product was measured with the following item: “Please indicate below the extent to which you agree this TV with rollable display is innovative” on a 5-point scale (1=strongly disagree and 5=strongly agree).
24
Car sharing taxi service Rollable TV
Vegan meat burger
Figure 3
Pictures of the three experimental products used in the survey
Openness to experience. The measurement of openness to experience is based on the Big Five
25
Nature relatedness. The current study made use of the Short-form Nature relatedness scale
(NR-6) which includes six items (Nisbet & Zelenski, 2013). This is a shortened version of the previously developed 21-item nature relatedness scale (Nisbet et al., 2009). The NR-6 is measured on a 5-point scale (1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree). Items include statements such as “My ideal vacation spot would be a remote, wilderness area” or “I always think about how my actions affect the environment” (α = .83).
3. Procedure
26 RESULTS
1. Data Preparation and Initial Analysis
Initial analysis of the data showed that from the 103 participants there were three people who took considerably more than two hours to finish the survey and according to the M±3SD rule they are considered as outliers, hence were excluded from the analysis. This will ensure higher validity of results, because if participants take a lot of time to finish the survey perhaps they also did something else before answering all questions. Since the main goal is to test the effect from the video condition, it can be concluded that the effect of awe might fade away, thus biasing those respondents’ answers. One hundred people were taken into consideration for the final analysis. Participants were of different nationalities, of which 33 (33%) were Bulgarian, 23 (23%) Dutch and 12 (12%) were German. The age range varied from 18 to 57 years old, but 96% of the participants range between 18 and 30 years old. Moreover, 58 (58%) participants reported to have obtained a Bachelor degree and 22 (22%) have a Master degree, while 71 of all participants are currently students and only 23 are full-time workers. Furthermore, 32 (32%) participants reported that they earn no income and 46 (46%) of the whole sample earns below 1000 euro per month, which makes up 78% of the sample.
2. Manipulation Check: Effect of Environmental Conditions on Emotion
27 participants felt smaller in the awe condition relative to the mundane condition. Results further show that the video condition had significant influence on the way people felt anger and happiness. Namely, people felt less angry in the awe condition, F(1,98) = 6.00, p = .02 and happier, F(1,98) = 4.17, p = .04 than in the mundane nature condition. Disgust was felt more in the mundane condition, showing results of marginal significance, F(1,98) = 3.37, p = .07. All other tested emotions did not show any significant differences between conditions. Figure 4 represents the difference in means between experimental conditions.
In conclusion, the awesome nature video was able to elicit emotions of awe and smallness significantly more than the video of mundane nature, which is in line with previous research. Table 1
Effect of environmental condition on emotions and feelings of smallness
Emotion Awesome nature Mundane nature df F p
M SD M SD Amusement 4.53 1.73 3.98 1.61 1,98 2.71 .103 Awe 5.02 1.81 4.27 1.64 1,98 4.68 .033 Disgust 1.35 0.69 1.71 1.19 1,98 3.37 .070 Anger 1.24 0.48 1.76 1.41 1,98 6.00 .016 Fear 1.49 0.82 1.71 1.03 1,98 1.35 .248 Happiness 5.63 0.91 5.22 1.12 1,98 4.17 .044 Sadness 2.53 1.60 2.45 1.30 1,98 0.08 .785 Smallness 4.63 1.30 4.14 1.31 1,98 3.53 .063 Significant at p<.05 Figure 4
Difference in the means of emotions between experimental conditions
4.53 5.02 1.35 1.24 1.49 5.63 2.53 4.63 3.98 4.27 1.71 1.76 1.71 5.22 2.45 4.14
Amusement Awe Disgust Anger Fear Happiness Sadness Smallness
28 3. Controlling for Participants’ Involvement and Product Innovativeness
There might be other factors except awe, like consumer product involvement or innovativeness of the product for example, that may have influenced participants’ evaluations. Therefore, these measures are taken into account as control measures. To analyse the data set, an independent samples t-test was conducted testing whether there is difference between the means of participants’ product involvement between the two environmental conditions. Levene’s test for equality of variances indicated that the variance between the two environmental conditions was equal for all three products, i.e. the car sharing service, F = 0.28, p = .60, the rollable TV, F = 0.18, p = .68 as well as the burger with vegan meat, F = 0.73, p = .40. Therefore, a t-test that presupposes equality of variances is used. There was no significant difference between participants’ product involvement in the different conditions for all products: car sharing service, t (98) = -0.61, p = .54, rollable TV, t (98) = 0.89, p = .38 and burger with vegan meat, t (98) = -0.07, p = .95. Although results were higher on average in the awesome condition for the TV, but not for the car sharing service and the vegan burger, product involvement was not significantly different across conditions. Statistics are shown in Table 2.
Table 2
Independent samples t-test for Product involvement
Awesome nature Mundane nature
M SD M SD
Car sharing taxi 3.23 0.86 3.34 0.91
Rollable TV 2.97 0.89 2.81 0.91
Vegan meat burger 3.20 1.33 3.22 1.21
29 presuppose equality was used. Results indicated no significant difference between experimental conditions for burger with vegan meat, t (92) = -0.72, p = .48 either. In summary, on average all three products scored higher on innovativeness in the mundane nature condition. However, participants did not perceive products as significantly more or less innovative depending on which condition they were exposed to. Statistics values are represented in Table 3 below.
Table 3
Independent samples t-test for Product Innovativeness
Awesome nature Mundane nature
M SD M SD
Car sharing taxi 4.16 0.94 4.20 0.80
Rollable TV 4.27 0.86 4.41 0.88
Vegan meat burger 3.69 1.30 3.86 1.04
4. Awe and Innovation Adoption
Independent samples t-test was also conducted to test the main hypothesized relationship between awe-evoking nature and innovation adoption. Levene’s test for equality of variances indicated that the variance between the two environmental conditions was equal for the car sharing service, F = 1.74, p = .19, the rollable TV, F = 1.37, p = .25 as well as the burger with vegan meat, F = 0.06, p = .80. This implies that a t-test that presupposes equality of variances is used. This test showed that there was no significant difference between the two experimental conditions for all three products: car sharing service, t (98) = -0.53, p = .59, rollable TV, t (98) = 0.68, p = .50 and burger with vegan meat, t (98) = 0.52, p = .60. Means and standard deviations values across conditions are represented in Table 4.
Table 4
Independent samples t-test for Innovation adoption
Awesome nature Mundane nature
M SD M SD
Car sharing taxi 5.09 1.30 5.21 1.03
Rollable TV 4.84 1.26 4.66 1.40
30 Participants’ willingness to accept an innovation was higher in the awesome than in the mundane nature condition for the rollable TV and the burger, but not for the car sharing service. However, there was no statistically significant influence of awe on innovation adoption and H1 must be rejected.
5. Awe and WTP1
To test whether there is an influence of awe on minimum and maximum willingness to pay, it was again conducted an independent samples t-test. For minimum WTP, Levene’s test for equality of variances indicated that the variance between the two environmental conditions was equal for all three products, i.e. the car sharing service, F = 3.42, p = .07, the rollable TV, F = 0.27, p = .61 as well as the burger with vegan meat, F = 0.07, p = .79. This implies that a t-test that presupposes equality of variances is used. Results did not indicate a significant difference between awe and mundane nature conditions for all three products: car sharing service, t (98) = -1.00, p = .32, rollable TV, t (98) = 0.02, p = .98 and burger with vegan meat, t (98) = 0.28, p = .78, meaning that participants’ minimum WTP was not significantly different across conditions. Participants’ minimum WTP was higher in the awesome than in the mundane nature condition for the TV and the burger, but not for the car sharing service. Statistics are shown in the Table 5 below.
Next, the independent samples t-test for maximum WTP resulted in Levene’s test for equality of variances with equal variance between the two environmental conditions for all three products, i.e. the car sharing service, F = .04, p = 0.85, the rollable TV, F = 0.75, p = .39 as well as the burger with vegan meat, F = 0.01, p = .93. Again, a t-test that presupposes equality of variances should be used. Results did not indicate a significant difference between awe and mundane nature conditions for all three products: car sharing service, t (98) = -0.24, p = .81, rollable TV, t (98) = 0.47, p = .64 and burger with vegan meat, t (98) = 0.37, p = .71. Likewise in the case of minimum WTP, the maximum WTP was higher in the awesome than in the mundane nature condition for the TV and the burger, but not for the car sharing service. Table 5 below shows detailed statistics.
1All analyses with regards to WTP were performed with log transformed values ones and then excluding the outliers (M±3SD).
31 In conclusion, no significant relationship between awe and WTP was found across conditions, meaning that H2 is rejected.
Table 5
Independent samples t-test for Minimum and Maximum WTP
Awesome nature Mundane nature
M SD M SD
Minimum WTP
Car sharing taxi 1.80 1.66 2.49 4.57
Rollable TV 453.59 486.01 451.61 419.19
Vegan meat burger 3.18 2.23 3.06 2.19
Maximum WTP
Car sharing taxi 4.45 7.39 4.80 7.39
Rollable TV 1033.67 888.96 959.59 679.59
Vegan meat burger 7.82 4.67 7.47 4.58
6. Openness to Experience as Moderator
32 Table 6
Moderation results for the 3 products with respect to innovation adoption
Interaction OPE x Condition beta t p LLCI ULCI
Car sharing service adoption 0.74 1.73 .09 -.11 1.59
Rollable TV adoption -1.01 -2.05 .04 -1.99 -.03
Vegan meat burger adoption -0.53 -0.85 .40 -1.77 .71 Significant at p<.05
As it can be seen from Figure 5 the effect of openness to experience goes in the opposite direction with regards to both products. In other words, the higher the level of openness, the less is the car sharing service adopted in the awe condition. Conversely, the higher the openness the stronger is the adoption for the rollable TV in the awe environmental condition.
Figure 5
The moderation effect of openness to experience on the influence of Environmental condition on Innovation adoption
To further test the moderating effect of openness to experience on the relationship between nature condition and WTP, moderation analyses were again conducted. Overall model for the minimum WTP showed statistically insignificant effect of the moderating variable (car sharing service, F (3,96) = 1.92, p = .13, R2 = .02; rollable TV, F (3,96) = 0.30, p = .83, R2 = .007; vegan meat burger,
F (3,96) = 0.32, p = .81, R2 = .01). Moreover, the overall model for the maximum WTP also showed statistically insignificant effect of the moderating variable (car sharing service, F (3,96) = 0.55, p = .65, R2 = .003; rollable TV, F (3,96) = 0.35, p = .79, R2 = .02; vegan meat burger, F (3,96) = 1.24, p = .30, R2 = .05). When looking further on the interaction between the experimental
4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 5 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6
Low Average High
C ar s hari ng se rvi ce adop ti on Openness to experience Awe Mundane 4 4.2 4.4 4.6 4.8 5 5.2 5.4
Low Average High
33 environmental condition and openness to experience (Table 7), there were also no significant effects both for minimum WTP, as well as for maximum WTP. Full statistical results from the analyses are provided in Appendix C. In conclusion, moderation is not found and openness to experience does not influence the relationship between nature condition and WTP, implying that
H4 is not adopted. Table 7
Moderation results for the 3 products with respect to minimum and maximum WTP
Interaction OPE x Condition beta t p LLCI ULCI Minimum
WTP
Car sharing service 0.35 0.28 .78 -2.15 2.85
Rollable TV -132.23 -0.85 .40 -441.78 177.31
Vegan meat burger 0.52 0.53 .60 -1.42 2.46
Maximum WTP
Car sharing service 1.06 0.59 .56 -2.51 4.63
Rollable TV -261.81 -0.91 .37 -835.10 311.49
Vegan meat burger 2.50 1.30 .20 -1.33 6.33 Significant at p<.05
7. Nature Relatedness as Moderator
To test for the moderating effect of Nature relatedness on the main dependent variables, multiple moderation analyses using the SPSS-macro PROCESS (Model 1) developed by Hayes were conducted. In general, relatively high level of nature relatedness was indicated (M = 3.57, SD = 0.80) among the sample. Moderation analyses were first conducted with regards to innovation adoption (for each product) used as dependent variable and the environmental condition used as independent variable. The overall model was statistically insignificant (car sharing service, F (3,96) = 0.19, p = .90, R2 = .004; rollable TV, F (3,96) = 0.57, p = .64, R2 = .02; vegan meat burger,
34 Table 8
Moderation results for the 3 products with respect to innovation adoption
Interaction NR x Condition beta t p LLCI ULCI
Car sharing service adoption 0.03 0.12 .90 -.55 .62
Rollable TV adoption -0.19 -0.52 .60 -.93 .54
Vegan meat burger adoption -0.88 -1.71 .09 -1.90 .14 Significant at p<.05
With respect to the awe-inducing condition, there is a moderately significant positive relationship of nature relatedness on the relationship between awe and burger adoption. In particular, the higher the nature relatedness, the higher the adoption of vegan burger in the awe condition (Figure 6).
Figure 6
The moderation effect of nature relatedness on the influence of Environmental condition on Innovation adoption
The same procedure was repeated in order to test for moderation effects of nature relatedness on the relationship of environmental condition and minimum and maximum WTP. Model summary for the minimum WTP showed statistically insignificant effect of the moderating variable (car sharing service, F (3,96) = 0.56, p = .64, R2 = .04; rollable TV, F (3,96) = 0.30, p = .83, R2 = .008; vegan meat burger, F (3,96) = 1.02, p = .39, R2 = .02). Moreover, the model summary for the maximum WTP showed statistically insignificant effect of the moderating variable (car sharing service, F (3,96) = 0.55, p = .65, R2 = .02; rollable TV, F (3,96) = 0.11, p = .95, R2 = .003; vegan meat burger, F (3,96) = 0.61, p = .61, R2 = .01). When looking further on the interaction between the experimental environmental condition and nature relatedness there were also no significant
4 4.2 4.4 4.6 4.8 5 5.2 5.4 5.6 5.8
Low Average High
35 effects (Table 9). Therefore, there is no moderating effect of people’s nature relatedness on the relationship between environmental condition and adoption of innovation and H6 must be rejected. Due to reasons of readability, full statistics are provided in Appendix D.
Table 9
Moderation results for the 3 products with respect to minimum and maximum WTP
Interaction NR x Condition beta t p LLCI ULCI Minimum
WTP
Car sharing service 0.96 1.12 .27 -.75 2.67
Rollable TV -95.93 -0.80 .43 -334.63 142.76
Vegan meat burger -0.54 -1.22 .23 -1.42 .34
Maximum WTP
Car sharing service 0.90 0.54 .59 -2.38 4.17
Rollable TV 40.11 0.19 .85 -372.49 452.71
Vegan meat burger 0.45 0.38 .71 -1.91 2.80 Significant at p<.05
8. Correlations
In order to further examine the relationship between the variables, a Pearson Correlation was conducted. To begin with, there was no significant correlation found between feelings of awe and any of the dependent variables, i.e. innovation adoption and willingness to pay. Exception of this is the correlation between awe and the minimum WTP for vegan meat burger r (98) = -.20, p = .045, showing that the more participants felt awe, the less their minimum WTP for the burger was. With regards to the feelings of smallness, there was a relationship only between smallness and car sharing taxi service adoption, r (98) = .22, p = .03, implying that stronger feelings of smallness increased the adoption of the car sharing service.
The data analysis further shows that the emotion of awe correlates significantly with the feeling of smallness, r (98) = .24, p = .02, which means that the stronger the feelings of awe, the stronger the feelings of smallness. These results are similar to previous research on the topic as discussed earlier in this study. What is more, the feeling of smallness also shows a significant positive relationship with nature relatedness, r (98) = .26, p = .01. From this it can be concluded that participants who scored higher on the NR scale experienced feelings of smallness more.
36 as well as between minimum and maximum WTP for the car sharing service. Results for the TV show correlation between adoption and innovativeness of product, as well as between adoption, WTP and involvement. Relationship between adoption, WTP, involvement and innovativeness of product is found for the burger.
37 Table 10
Correlations between the main variables
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1. Awe ,237* 0.023 0.068 -0.138 -0.099 0.067 -0.089 0.065 0.085 0.091 0.102 -,201* -0.105 0.018 -0.059 -0.086 0.056 0.098 2. Smallness 0.096 0.044 -0.030 ,216* -0.151 -0.007 0.107 0.082 -0.102 -0.111 -0.064 0.127 0.180 -0.077 0.092 0.065 ,257** 3. Car innovative ,360** 0.059 ,451** 0.115 0.107 -0.012 0.015 0.012 0.054 0.094 0.190 ,373** 0.065 ,219* 0.094 -0.153 4. TV innovative 0.144 0.001 ,254* 0.133 0.050 0.064 0.117 0.173 -0.027 0.097 -0.052 0.040 0.073 0.181 -0.183 5. Vegan innovative 0.182 0.045 ,527** 0.028 -0.115 -0.065 -0.160 ,286** ,329** 0.105 0.039 ,544** 0.103 0.159 6. Car sharing adoption -0.055 ,232 * -0.006 -0.054 -0.112 -0.107 0.078 ,202* ,639** 0.016 ,287** 0.063 0.023 7. Rollable TV adoption 0.012 0.038 0.011 ,242 * ,221* -0.080 -0.043 -0.022 ,757** -0.077 0.079 -0.090 8. Vegan meat adoption 0.084 -0.035 -0.188 -0.164 ,340 ** ,451** 0.129 0.011 ,858** -0.059 0.112 9. Car sharing Min
WTP ,856
** -0.001 -0.019 0.130 0.139 0.005 0.090 0.072 -0.069 0.129 10. Car sharing Max
WTP -0.071 -0.067 0.066 0.090 -0.015 0.014 -0.058 -0.030 0.114 11. Rollable TV Min WTP ,843 ** 0.120 -0.193 -0.082 ,287** -0.177 0.014 0.028 12. Rollable TV Max WTP 0.020 -0.143 -0.078 ,298 ** -0.180 0.067 0.022 13. Vegan Meat Min
WTP ,635 ** 0.155 0.085 ,373** 0.086 0.098 14. Vegan Meat Max WTP ,198 * 0.066 ,428** 0.158 0.109 15. Car sharing involvement ,237 * ,231* ,250* ,225* 16. Rollable TV involvement 0.037 0.108 0.133 17. Vegan meat involvement -0.011 ,202 * 18. Openness ,341** 19. Nature Relatedness
38 9. Exploratory Analysis
Interesting tendency was seen when further exploring the correlations matrix, in other words relationships were found between dependent variables (innovation adoption and WTP) and product innovativeness and product involvement (Table 10). Therefore, it was intriguing to explore these relationships in more depth. In order to test whether these variables influence the main hypothesized relationship, moderation analyses using the SPSS-macro PROCESS (Model 1) developed by Hayes were performed again, this time with innovativeness of product as moderating variable. Innovation adoption and WTP (for each product) were used as dependent variables and the environmental condition was the independent variable. There was significant moderating effect found only with regards to the adoption of the rollable TV (Table 11). Overall model was significant as well, F (3,96) = 8.58, p < .001, R2 = .14 (see Appendix E for full statistical results). Following this analyses, it was also interesting to test whether product involvement would be a moderator of the relationship between environmental condition and dependent variables. Moderation analyses were therefore conducted using the SPSS-macro PROCESS developed by Hayes (Model 1) with product involvement as moderating variable. Innovation adoption and WTP (for each product) were used as dependent variables and the environmental condition was the independent variable. Product involvement turned out to be moderating the relationship only between environmental condition and minimum as well as maximum WTP of the rollable TV. Overall models were also significant (minimum WTP, F (3,96) = 4.20, p = .01, R2 = .16 and maximum WTP, F (3,96) = 3.50, p = .02, R2 = .16). Interaction results can be found in Table 11 and full statistics are presented in Appendix F.
Table 11
Moderating effect of product innovativeness and product involvement on the main variables for rollable TV
Interaction Innovativeness x Condition beta t p LLCI ULCI
Rollable TV adoption -0.79 -2.26 .03 -1.49 -0.10
Interaction Involvement x Condition beta t p LLCI ULCI
Rollable TV min WTP -272.75 -2.23 .03 -515.83 -29.67
39 The moderating influence of product innovativeness is plotted in Figure 7, showing that higher product innovativeness leads to higher levels adoption for the rollable TV.
Figure 7
The moderation effect of product innovativeness on the influence of Environmental condition on Innovation adoption
Figure 8 further shows that when involvement for product increases, the amount of WTP increases as well.
Figure 8
The moderation effect of product involvement on the influence of Environmental condition on Innovation adoption 4 4.2 4.4 4.6 4.8 5 5.2 5.4 5.6
Low Average High
R o lla ble TV a do pt io n Product Innovativeness Awe Mundane 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Low Average High
R ol lable T V m in WT P Product Involvement Awe Mundane 500 700 900 1100 1300 1500
Low Average High
40 DISCUSSION
1. Summary of Findings
This thesis provided a detailed literature review on the topic of innovation adoption, as well as on the concept of awe. Based on the extant research, it was hypothesized that evoking feelings of awe in consumers can positively influence innovation adoption and willingness to pay. Therefore, researching and analysing the possibilities for such relationship was the main goal of this study. Initial analysis, i.e. the manipulation check supports predictions stated in the beginning of the study. Specifically, the awesome nature video condition was able to elicit emotions of awe in participants significantly more than in the mundane nature condition. Moreover, the video showing grand nature made participants feel small more than the other nature condition. This is in line with previous researches on awe (Piff et al., 2015). However, the main hypotheses were not supported and no significant relationship was found between the independent variable and the dependent variables. There was no significant difference between innovation adoption, minimum and maximum WTP across conditions, meaning that awe did not significantly influence consumers’ innovation adoption and willingness to pay. A possible reason for such results might lay in the findings of Griskevicius et al. (2010) who argue that awe increases systematic processing, i.e. people are involved in more deep scrutinizing of information and less likely to rely on heuristics. This is in contrast, with the developed storyline in this study, namely that positive emotions, awe in particular for the current research, might lead to higher reliance on heuristics to influence people’s judgements.
41 sharing service decreases when consumers’ openness to experience increases. However, adoption for the rollable TV increases for those who score high on openness. Perhaps this implies that one’s openness affects his or her adoption of innovations in a different way depending on the product category. Furthermore, the moderating effect of openness with regards to the car sharing service is only marginally significant, which implies that results are not highly reliable.
Moreover, it was possible that one’s level of connectedness to nature would have an impact on the relationship between experiencing awe and innovation acceptance and WTP. Nature relatedness also did not appear to be influencing the relationship between the main variables. There was only marginally significant result for the interaction between nature relatedness and the environmental conditions for the vegan burger (Table 8). Stronger relatedness to the nature results in higher levels of adoption for the vegan burger. As nowadays environmental concerns are becoming more and more vivid among the contemporary society, this might be a possible driver for the occurrence of such relationship.
In summary, the results from the moderation analyses imply that perhaps consumers’ openness to experience might have higher impact on adoption for technological products, whereas nature relatedness might play a role when adopting products that are environmentally friendly.
Furthermore, all products were perceived as innovative (Table 3), which infers that there might be higher uncertainty, related to the innovation because it is something unknown and consumers might not have enough information. Uncertainty can be a barrier for consumers to accept innovations and this might have had an impact on the analysis (Rogers, 2003). Although this may be true, no significant difference of product innovativeness was found between awe vs. mundane nature conditions. Results for product involvement were not that high, but they were still above average (Table 2). Arts et al. (2011) argue that product involvement usually is considered as a factor influencing one’s adoption intention and behaviour, so this might have influenced final results. However, no significant difference of product involvement was found among experimental conditions.
42 the relationship between experimental conditions and both minimum and maximum WTP for rollable TV (Table 11). Figure 7 indicated higher adoption levels as the perceived innovativeness increases, which is contrary to the above mentioned suggestions (i.e. that the more innovative the product is the higher uncertainty it might evokes in consumers, thus decreasing adoption). Key point here may be the findings of Arts et al. (2011), who distinguish between adoption intention and adoption behaviour, which might make one consider this as a reason for such results. This implies that further confirmatory research on the topic is needed. Figure 8 further shows results in support of previous finding that product involvement plays important role for innovation adoption (Arts et al., 2011), in this case for WTP of an innovative product. However, these findings need more thorough attention and research.
2. Limitations
Despite the aforementioned possible reasons for the lack of significance in the results, there are also few limitations within the study itself, which might have influenced the outcomes. First of all, it might be argued whether the sample of the survey was representative enough due to various reasons. For example, the survey was completed only by 103 participants, which is relatively small number to draw robust conclusions. Moreover, the sample was highly homogeneous when it comes to demographics, with 96% of the survey population being between 18 and 30 years old, 71% currently students and 78% of all participants earning low or no income at the moment of completing the survey. Next, there were also time constraints, on one hand because the respondents were gathered within approximately one week. On the other hand, the study itself was aimed to be around 10 minutes long, because otherwise participants could get fatigued. From this last reason stems another one, namely that due to the time constraints some of the scales were not used in their original form, but adapted short scales were used instead. Moreover, because the survey included a short three minutes long video, during which participants were not able to proceed, this might have caused boredom and fatigue in addition to the fact that there was no remuneration for their participation.
43 of the participants needed one or two hours, or even longer to finish the questionnaire. Future research should be conducted in a laboratory setting to ensure maximum control and environment without distractions.
Looking further to the materials which were used to conduct the survey, more limitations are rising. First of all, the video manipulation might have not induced enough feelings of awe in individuals, relative to stimuli used in previous researches. Second, with respect to the experimental products (i.e. car sharing taxi, rollable TV and vegan meat burger), a possible limitation concerning the vegan burger is that it was not controlled whether there are vegan or vegetarian participants, because this might have influenced their answers.
The study took into account mainly adopter characteristics (i.e. openness and nature relatedness), leaving out measurements for product innovation characteristics. For example, Rogers (2003) argues that relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability of the innovation are factors influencing innovation adoption. Items measuring these product characteristics can be taken into account for future research.
3. Recommendations for Further Research
Some of the research limitations infer possible future improvements of the research on the topic of awe and innovation adoption. For example, future research should strive at gathering bigger sample, which is as heterogeneous as possible, to ensure higher validity and reliability of the results.
44 Another recommendation for future research is that materials for the survey such as the awe manipulation and the products tested should be chosen more carefully. First of all, it might be helpful to do a pre-test in order to choose the most appropriate video with awesome stimuli. The same implies for the products, a pre-test can be conducted to test which products are generally perceived as most innovative and those who score highest should be then used for the final survey. Also, more product categories should be considered for generalizability of the possible outcomes. It might as well be that these particular product types are not influenced by awe emotions, but there might be other product categories that would be more convenient for the research on this topic. Previous researches have used other types of materials (except videos) for eliciting awe, such as pictures (Joye & Dewitte, 2016) or description tasks (Shiota et al., 2007) and future research might also focus on finding out which type of stimuli, from the above mentioned, is eliciting awe the most. Moreover, Chirico, Yaden, Riva and Gaggioli (2016) suggest that virtual reality (VR) is an effective way of evoking awe, which might be a fruitful tool for future studies.
Future research might also consider doing a field experiment eliciting awe and then testing for the influence on product innovation adoption. For example, Piff et al. (2015) conducted a field experiment in which they induced awe in participants through towering threes in front of them. A similar setting might be tested where participants are exposed to grand vista (e.g. waterfall or mountain), instead of just watching videos of those. Then, they could be offered an innovative product (such as the vegan burger) and test their willingness to buy, for example.
Furthermore, there are other types of awe elicitors except nature stimuli and this might be a fruitful field for research as well. For example, Keltner and Haidt (2003) argue that other elicitors of awe are powerful leaders, encounter with God (or other supernatural creature), tornado, grand vista, cathedral, awe-inspiring music and grand theory. Joye and Dewitte (2016), also found that tall buildings are able to prime awe in people.
45 4. Managerial Implications
As discussed previously, innovations are an important influencing factor for both economic growth and company development (Wong et al., 2005). Thus, it is important for marketers to gather more insights on what affects consumers’ adoption of innovations. This research would have provided crucial implications if significant results were discovered. However, no significant prove that indicates influence of awe on innovation adoption or WTP was found.
As expected, this study confirms the already established in the literature findings that priming consumers with awesome natural stimuli evokes awe in consumers. This infers that grand nature should be used by marketers and advertisers if by any means they would need to prime such feeling in their target audience. Moreover, when further exploring the effects of feeling awe and smallness, the correlation matrix suggests relationship between smallness and the adoption of the car sharing service. Having in mind that this is an untraditional taxi service involving the social element of sharing, such result might bring one’s attention to extant findings on awe and smallness, i.e. that the diminishment of the self leads to prosociality and altruism (Joye & Bolderdijk, 2015; Piff et al., 2015; Van Cappellen & Saroglou, 2012). Hence, although more research is needed, this can be a possible reason for the correlation between these two variables. Perhaps priming consumers with these feelings will have greater and possibly significant influence on adoption of products, consisting of a social element (i.e. innovative board games or escape rooms).
Moreover, the results from the moderation analyses can serve as a guideline for marketers implying that consumers’ openness to experience trait can be influential when it comes to technological products such as the ones used in this study (car sharing service with self-driving vehicle and rollable TV). On the other hand, the level of consumer’ nature relatedness might influence their decisions for environmentally friendly products like the vegan burger. This implies that when marketers choose the appropriate target market, they should look for people with one of these characteristics, depending on the innovative product they need to advertise.
