Factors, mediators and moderators mitigating impulsive buying behavior of blind boxes in China

In recent years, blind box products become the largest pop toy segment in China, particularly popular among young consumers, leading to increasing impulsive buying behaviors. These products resemble gambling items and present four key issues: First, questionable transparency in probability settings by merchants. Second, young consumers are curious and lack self-control. Third, the government's policy on blind boxes is currently lacking. Fourth, limited application of Dual-System Theory (DST) in understanding impulsive purchases. To date, the empirical research on blind boxes is still in its early stages and requires more research to fill the gap. This study examines the mechanisms behind the impulsive buying behavior of blind box products in China to reduce consumers' impulsive buying behavior. Thus, this study mainly explores the impulsive buying behavior mechanism from two perspectives: curiosity and self-control. First, the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model was applied to explore the relationship between curiosity and the antecedents of impulsive buying, and the effect sizes of the antecedents were compared. Second, by integrating DST with the SOR model, this study examines whether curiosity mediates the relationships between fashion involvement, store atmosphere, perceived novelty, and surprise—each potentially diminishing self-control. Third, explore the negative impact of the cold system process centred on self-control on impulsive buying behaviour, use goals conflict, self-monitoring and mindfulness as a new innovative combination to fill the current gap with the antecedent of self-control. Meanwhile, compare the effect size relationship of these three antecedents. Fourth, the study tests whether self-control mediates the link between curiosity and impulsive buying behavior. The fifth and sixth objectives are to examine the negative moderating effects of price consciousness/low perceived luck on curiosity and impulsive buying and the negative relationship between self-control and impulsive buying by adopting the adaptation level theory and optimism theory, respectively. In addition, data was collected by the purposive sampling (most of the respondents from the online blind box topic searching way) approach through an online questionnaire to determine whether the Chinese consumers born after 1979 who purchase blind boxes at least annually. Responses from 487 participants were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Furthermore, this study yielded six noteworthy findings: 1) Fashion involvement is unrelated to curiosity; the main curiosity drivers are perceived novelty, surprise, and store atmosphere, with product characteristics as the dominant factor; 2) Among all the antecedents of curiosity, only fashion involvement cannot negatively affect self￾control through curiosity; 3) Goals conflict is not an antecedent of self-control, as collectors show minimal conflict; self-monitoring influences self-control more significantly than mindfulness; 4) In the dual system based on this context, the hot system is affected better than the cold system, and curiosity is negatively related to self-control; 5) and 6) Low perceived luck has a negative regulatory between curiosity and impulse buying behavior and positive regulatory effect between self-control and impulse buying behavior, while price consciousness has no effect. Apart from advancing the literature, this study offers significant contributions to consumers, merchants, the government, and scholars who study addictive behaviors

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