A social norms-based framework for understanding and predicting giver-recipient discrepancies in gift selection
本文提出一个基于社会规范的框架，通过五项实验解释送礼者与受礼者在礼物选择中的不对称现象，发现当礼物在描述性规范上较弱但指令性规范不弱时，分歧更易出现，且不适感是驱动因素。
Purpose The gift-giving literature has documented several cases in which givers and recipients do not see eye-to-eye in gift-giving decisions. To help integrate this considerable segment of the gifting literature, this paper aims to develop a social norms-based framework for understanding and predicting giver-recipient asymmetries in gift selection. Design/methodology/approach Five experimental studies test the hypotheses. Participants in these studies evaluate gifts used in previous research, choose between gifts as either gift-givers or gift-recipients, and/or indicate their level of discomfort with choosing different kinds of gifts. The gifts vary in ways that allow the authors to test the social norms-based framework. Findings Gift-giving asymmetries tend to occur when one of the gifts under consideration is less descriptively, but not less injunctively, normative than the other. This theme holds for both asymmetries recorded in the gift-giving literature and novel ones. Indeed, the authors document new asymmetries in cases where the framework would expect asymmetries to occur and, providing critical support for the framework, the absence of asymmetries in cases where the framework would not expect asymmetries to emerge. Moreover, the authors explain these asymmetries, and lack thereof, using a mechanism that is novel to the literature on gift-giving mismatches: feelings of discomfort. Research limitations/implications This research has multiple theoretical implications for the literatures studying gift-giving and social norms. A limitation of this work is that it left some (secondary) predictions of its model untested. Future research could test some of these predictions. Practical implications Billions of dollars are spent on gifts each year, making gift-giving a research topic of great practical importance. In addition, the research offers suggestions to consumers giving gifts, consumers receiving gifts, as well as marketers. Originality/value The research is original in that it creates a novel framework that predicts both the presence and absence of gift-giving asymmetries, introduces a psychological mechanism to the literature on giver-recipient gift choice asymmetries, and unifies many of the mismatches previously documented in this literature.