Seeking Stability: Consumer Motivations for Communal Nostalgia
研究发现，当消费者感到社会系统受到威胁时，他们更偏好那些从未属于个人过去的怀旧产品（共同怀旧），因为这能带来社会稳定性，且这种效应通过产品提供的稳定感中介。
Existing research has examined why consumers are drawn to things from their past (personal nostalgia). However, little empirical work has examined why consumers prefer products that were never a part of their personal history (communal nostalgia). For example, a consumer may purchase vinyl records even though she grew up listening to mp3 files. Here, we find that one reason why consumers may be drawn to communal nostalgia is that it can provide a sense of social stability. Drawing on System Justification Theory (Jost & Banaji, British Journal of Social Psychology , 33, 1994 and 1–27), we demonstrate that perceived threats to the social system increase consumer demand for communal nostalgia and enhance the pleasure consumers get from certain retro products. We further show that a retro product’s ability to provide a sense of stability to consumers mediates the effect of system justification on communal nostalgia. Together, these findings suggest that communal nostalgia may be driven by its own unique motivational antecedents that are distinct from personal nostalgia, as individuals seek to connect to aspects of society that are perceived as stable and unchanging.